Nantucket

by Harrison Young

  “I loved you,” he said. It was approximately true.

  “It wasn’t the love I wanted.” She paused. “I prefer women. I’m not even bisexual. There, I’ve said it.”

  “I know. I expect I knew from early on. People generally know things and pretend they don’t. Judy did that. I’ll have to tell you that story. I kept busy, so neither of us would have to acknowledge our mistake.”

  “I kept busy too,” she said. “I reckon I’ve done a hundred weekends worth of house guests.”

  “That’s probably right.”

  “I looked at myself in the mirror one morning, soon after I’d finished nursing Florence. We were still living in Brooklyn then. We still didn’t have any money but you seemed to be doing well at work. I figured you’d be a good provider for our daughters. This is the life you bought, I told myself. It was on sale. You can’t return it.”

  “Maybe you should have,” said Andrew.

  They walked in silence for a while.

  “I’m sorry there wasn’t more sex,” said Cathy.

  “Not your fault,” said Andrew.

  More silence.

  “There wasn’t sex for me either,” she said. “Just copulation. But that was my responsibility. Oh, sweetie, if I talk any more I’ll probably just hurt you.”

  More silence.

  “I seem to have a relationship,” said Andrew cautiously, “with Rosemary. I think you met her.”

  “The gorgeous English woman? How amazing. Sorry, I didn’t mean that as a put-down.” And then: “I don’t have a relationship with anyone.”

  “I didn’t mean to gloat,” said Andrew. “And yes, it is unexpected. And, yes, I have been unfaithful to you in the past two days.”

  “Not knowing where I was? How could you do that?”

  “It just happened. If it is any comfort to you, it’s never happened before.” Or not completely, he added silently.

  “There was that woman,” said Cathy.

  “The one you kissed last summer?”

  “I called her once. A few weeks later. I hung up, though, when she answered the phone. That was all.”

  “Sally?” said Andrew, and then wished he hadn’t.

  “She did try to seduce you, didn’t she?”

  “She mostly made me nervous,” said Andrew. He wanted to build some distance between himself and Sally, at least in Cathy’s mind.

  “I should think so,” said Cathy. “Anyway, what I did with Sally is irrelevant. I’d already decided to leave. I was just trying to achieve escape velocity.”

  “She said you kissed.”

  “We did more than that.”

  “She didn’t tell me that.”

  “Well, we already know she lies, don’t we?”

  “You realise she’s a prostitute?” said Andrew. “An engaging and creative one, but still.”

  “That’s why I hired her,” said Cathy.

  “You wanted her to seduce me?”

  “It would have been an excuse for leaving you. When I hired her I didn’t have a plan, though. I was just doing what you’d told me to – as I always have. Hire someone skinny and voluptuous, you said, someone to keep me company, who you could fantasise about. Go to a nanny agency, you said. Fuck that, I said. I was desperate – which called for desperate measures. I bought one of those magazines with quote personal classifieds. She was the third woman I interviewed and I thought she was perfect.”

  “She was,” said Andrew. “She got you to let go.”

  Cathy didn’t respond. “Tell me about what happened when you arrived and I wasn’t there,” she said.

  Andrew recounted the events at the airport, her proposition, the fifteen seconds he’d had to decide, Sally explaining “intimacy without sex” as she undressed. He tried to make the story amusing, which was something he knew how to do. Cathy laughed. Andrew laughed. Laughing reminded them both of times they’d had fun together. They both began to cry, hugged each other, regained their composure, continued to walk.

  It was still early. There was no one on the beach, though there probably would be soon.

  “I don’t think we’ll make it to the lighthouse,” said Andrew.

  “We never have,” said Cathy. “Except when we were herding house guests.”

  They turned around and walked back.

  “What do you want me to tell people?” said Cathy as they got near the house. “What are we both going to say?”

  “We say we had twenty great years but our paths have separated. Those who care about either of us will accept that. We don’t owe anyone an explanation. We all have failures we’d rather not elaborate on. I’m being fired Monday, by the way, or so it appears. But that’s fine. I’ll get over it. We have enough money.” He walked on a bit. “But as to how we conduct ourselves, sometimes a bear just needs to go into its cave, wait out a winter of self-mockery and grief, and hope to emerge a better bear when the snow melts.”

  “I expect to be good at self-mockery,” said Cathy briskly. She got impatient whenever he tried to be eloquent. “Perhaps I should be the one to talk to Eleanor,” she said.

  “That might be best,” said Andrew. “I’ll call Florence.”

  They were a hundred yards short of the wooden steps, the tunnel through the bushes and the house. Andrew stopped. “What are your plans?”

  “I don’t have any plans.”

  “My billionaires are leaving this afternoon, but I’d arranged to stay until tomorrow morning, to help you and Sally clean up.”

  “That was a nice thought, sweetie.”

  “The relationships have gotten a bit jumbled, though, so I don’t honestly know who’s doing what. Do you want to stay here?”

  “Could you stand it? I’m suddenly exhausted.”

  “It’s your house too.”

  Now that he and Cathy were declaring defeat, Andrew’s brain was flooded with memories of roads not taken. “You go in,” he said to her. “I need to walk a bit more.”

  Venetia of the flannel pyjamas had opened the door on time and let Andrew in when he stood on the doorstep of her tiny house in a fashionable neighbourhood at two o’clock in the morning. She was wearing slacks and a sweater. “I was afraid you’d come,” she said. They hadn’t discussed it after the first night.

  “Didn’t you want me to?” he said.

  “Of course I did. It’s gratifying when men want me.”

  “But…?”

  “I’ll give you a cup of tea, or a whiskey if you want. Yes, perhaps we ought to have a drink. But then you have to leave.”

  He wasn’t utterly surprised. She poured Glenmorangie into two glasses. They both drank it down in a single gulp.

  “You aren’t ready for a man who cries?” he said. He knew that wasn’t it.

  “I’m not ready for a man who’s married and has a daughter, who lives in New York, who I am in grave danger of falling in love with.”

  “One kiss?”

  She nodded her head to say yes.

  He’d walked the twenty blocks to his hotel, letting empty taxis pass him.

  When Andrew was made a partner and bought the house in Nantucket with the intention of giving his own house parties, it was called “Spouter Cottage” – a Moby Dick reference. He wanted to change it to “Guilty Memories,” which would have been a Venetia reference, but he never actually suggested it. Cathy maintained that giving your house a name was pretentious. And to be honest, the memory of Venetia had still been painful.

  It now occurred to Andrew that if he had been unfaithful to Cathy with Venetia, they might have given up on their marriage a lot sooner. Andrew would have confessed. He was that kind of man. Cathy could have said, “In that case…” and been free. So it turned out there was truth in Venetia’s riddles. Cathy had been punished for what Andrew hadn’t done.

  13

  By the time Andrew got back to his nameless house, the Governor had essentially taken over. Having known him since they were seventeen, Andrew recognised the signs. George became ma
nic when there was a girl he wanted to impress. This rarely turned out to be advantageous to the girl.

  Janis had been set up in the tiny study wedged among the bedrooms on the second floor. The door had been closed and all the guests had assumed it was a closet – everyone except Cynthia, that is, who seemed to have done a lot of exploring. “We need a place for Janis,” George had loudly announced. “We need a place for Janis to work, to get these agreements drafted.” Rosemary described the scene to Andrew when he got back from his walk with Cathy. Cynthia had suggested the study. There was a desk that faced the door, with a chair behind it and two others facing it. Andrew’s Harvard diploma hung on the wall, above a small bookcase.

  Seeing Janis sitting there, when he briefly looked in, it occurred to Andrew that she was good in tight places, good at making the best of things. Her humour and good manners probably didn’t reflect a privileged upbringing as he had initially supposed. Her mother was probably a single parent, an underpaid, enormously competent executive secretary – same as Judy’s, come to think of it – who’d taught her how to fit in, how to be indispensable, how to never make anyone important uncomfortable. And with that training and emotional endowment, Janis had found her way to the Governor’s office, devoting herself to a man whose political destiny meant he could never marry her, even if he came to love her. Along with self-discipline and resilience, Janis had a talent for having her heart broken.

  Janis also had a laptop. She always did. “I never know when I’ll have to issue a statement,” the Governor had explained, as if that would have been news. There was a printer under the desk that seemed to be willing to take instructions from the laptop. “A very helpful little machine,” George called it. To go with very helpful Janis, Andrew said to himself.

  George had begun by ushering people in to see Janis, one by one, and interrogating them on what they wanted or needed or felt others were entitled to. “The Grand Bargain,” he initially called it. Janis took notes on a yellow legal pad. “I know how to make deals,” he told Andrew when he and Cathy returned.

  “Several of us know how to do that,” said Andrew sharply.

  Andrew was feeling far from manic. Bringing twenty years of marriage to a close didn’t feel like something to celebrate, even if it was a relief. Rosemary seemed to feel that too. It was twelve years of marriage she was discarding, if he’d done the maths right. Anyway, she seemed a bit subdued.

  The night before, once Sally had been outed, it had seemed to Andrew that Rosemary was assuming the role of hostess. He’d liked that. He wanted her to stay forever. Now, with Cathy in evidence, it felt like Rosemary had pulled back. Surely she didn’t think Cathy would go back to being the person she’d been. Or that Andrew wanted that.

  “…political deals,” George was saying, warming to his subject, as six of them sat around the table drinking coffee while Janis worked away upstairs. “This is about rights and reputation as well as financial outcomes, and it’s a multi-party understanding in which competing interests must be balanced.”

  “I have no reputation to worry about any more,” said Cathy. “I’m going to my bedroom.”

  “So it’s a ‘Concert of Nantucket’ you are aiming for,” said Shiva, “like the ‘Concert of Europe.’ My uncle was a diplomat, remember,” he added, as if to apologise.

  The Governor liked that. “You can do the economics, Andrew,” he said generously. “You’ll do that better. There always have to be bankers to do the economics.”

  “There were bankers at Versailles and no one listened to them,” said Shiva. “Keynes was there. He wrote his famous book about it.”

  “Keynes wasn’t a banker,” said Andrew. “He was an economist and a speculator.”

  “Versailles was a failure,” said Rosemary.

  “How about the Congress of Vienna?” said the Governor. “That worked, if I remember rightly.”

  “‘Congress of Vienna’ sounds like sex,” said Judy. Andrew suspected everything in the world reminded Judy of sex this morning.

  “Sex works,” said Rosemary. “So presumably the Congress of Vienna did too.”

  “My wife, the optimist – who read poetry at university,” said Shiva. “My soon-to-be-former wife, that is.”

  “Thank you, Shiva dear,” said Rosemary. Just possibly, that was his first outright indication that he intended more changes than retirement. Rosemary seemed all right with that. Andrew was more than all right that she was.

  “The Congress of Vienna did work,” said Shiva, “for ninety-nine years – from 1815 to 1914.”

  “So what’s the difference,” said Judy, “between a ‘congress’ and a ‘concert’ – diplomatically, that is?”

  “A concert is a harmonious arrangement,” said Shiva. “A congress is a meeting where you negotiate to achieve it. The Congress of Vienna is where the Concert of Europe was conceived, in fact. The Concert was sometimes called the ‘Congress System’ because there was an understanding that problems would be solved through further meetings, further congresses, rather than wars.”

  “Sex as a precursor to further sex,” said Rosemary.

  “You would have been a fine diplomat, Shiva,” said the Governor, acknowledging Rosemary’s contribution with a flicker of a smile. “Did you ever consider it?”

  “An eldest son has no choice,” said Shiva. “Not if there is a lot of money to be attended to.”

  “A prince and therefore a prisoner,” said Andrew.

  “A politician of sorts,” said the Governor.

  “But without the hope of losing an election,” said Shiva.

  “More coffee, anyone?” said George, bouncing up from the table. And then: “I’d better check on Janis.”

  “Leave her alone,” said Rosemary.

  Andrew opened his mouth to second her suggestion but then closed it without speaking. There was no point in arguing with George when he was manic. You only had two choices. You could laugh or you could get grumpy. Laughing was much the better course, but Andrew was feeling twitchy and uncertain on so many levels that his sense of humour seemed to be failing him. Don’t be rude, he said to himself. Keep your thoughts to yourself. Having been told he had no immediate role, he went out onto the porch and sat on the steps.

  Thinking about Venetia had been quite unsettling, actually. She’d been haunting him ever since Joe described his own experience of an English shooting party and the girl he’d failed to pursue. Venetia had visited him off and on for nineteen years.

  There was Venetia getting into the bathtub, which was jolly and erotic. There was Venetia the tease, which was also erotic, and all that kissing, which felt sweet and genuine even if it was advertised as part of the teasing. Then the disappointments of his marriage had jumped out and confronted him. He’d cried like a four-year-old. And Venetia had been really nice about it, making it plain, in that oblique way the English have, that she didn’t really think love was a game either, and that while she had no intention of getting involved, if he was willing to wrestle with the pain and complications of a divorce with a baby and no money, which she assumed he wasn’t, she could be prepared to get serious. Or at least that was the shape memory gave events. “I was afraid you’d come,” she’d said. And she’d been right. Whether it was cowardice or virtue, he hadn’t been prepared for pain and complications. Some evenings, when he’d drunk too much, it felt like the great failure of his life. And now here was Rosemary as a second chance.

  “The issues seem to be,” said Rosemary quietly, sitting down next to Andrew when George went back upstairs, “and in no particular order: ensuring no one discloses the foolishness Sally got us up to last night; the fact that we all went to bed with quote, the wrong partners, unquote; your fees; the understanding Joe and Shiva reach about combining bits of their respective businesses; Cynthia’s payout from her pre-nuptial agreement; what Joe wants to offer Sally; what Shiva is prepared to offer Judy; whether Judy will accept anything – so far she refuses; who gets the seats on this evening’s f
light to Manhattan, and if Cynthia isn’t one of them, who fills in for her on breakfast television; what story George tells Lydia – he hasn’t brought that up but it’s hovering over us like the Hindenburg; whether any of us need to vouch for him; whether we should; whether we have enough left-overs; whether Cathy will spend the night here or is going to ask Lydia for a bed; whether whatever Janis, poor girl, drafts would stand up in court if anyone wished to contest it; what court would have jurisdiction – oh, and I nearly forgot, how does Shiva go about giving Joe sufficient authority over the rest of his multi-billion-dollar empire to persuade Joe to take charge of it, which Shiva continues to want to do even though Janis tells him he shouldn’t.” She paused. “That’s my list, anyway.”

  “What about you?” said Andrew. There was just a little space between them on the step, he noticed.

  “I spend tonight in the servant’s room with you no matter what. I assume that’s not negotiable.”

  “I suppose we have to make lunch,” said Andrew. No, it certainly wasn’t negotiable. Maybe he should have said that.

  “And dinner for whoever’s left,” said Rosemary.

  “Should we go to the store?”

  “In a bit. You should probably talk to George some more. He’s too excited to be thinking clearly. In fact, the people who should go to the store are Cynthia Jane and Rosemary.” Andrew raised an eyebrow, which Rosemary ignored. “You should talk to Joe and Shiva – separately. They both seem to trust you.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “They told George they do.”

  “That’s nice.” It was more than that. For an investment banker trying to be “broker to the deal,” it was the ultimate accolade. But Andrew wasn’t opening any champagne yet. There was a lot of anxiety in the air.

  “It’s a sort of hybrid agreement,” said Joe when Andrew found him in the garden.

  Andrew was only half listening. I should have told Rosemary I trust her, he kept saying to himself. She’s my broker. She’s my salvation. I must tell her the next chance I get. “Yes, Joe,” he said aloud, having missed Joe’s last sentence.