Commonwealth(62)

There was a time when Franny would have been overwhelmed by the thought of John Hollinger coming for dinner, but that time had passed. Now he and his wife represented nothing more than two extra place settings at the table. This brought them up to eight, assuming that Jonas and Astrid would never leave.

“What about you?” Eric said, glancing down at Franny as if finally remembering she’d been gone. “Nice day?”

Franny shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at him, puzzled. “Sure,” she said. That was all they needed to release her from the conversation.

There were six cardboard boxes on the long wooden table in the kitchen, a half a dozen ears of corn still in their green sleeves. She heard the sound of scratching, and then one of the boxes jerked abruptly forward.

Leo came into the kitchen and stood behind her. “I’m sorry about Hollinger,” he said, kissing the side of her head. “He wasn’t asking. He called to announce his impending arrival. We should have rented a motel room in the middle of Kansas for the summer.”

“They would have found us.”

“I spent the day hiding in the cabin so that everyone would think I was writing a novel. Where did you go?”

“What’s in the boxes?” Franny said, though of course she knew exactly what was in the boxes.

“Marisol thought it would be fun to have lobster.”

Franny turned and looked at him. “She said she was a vegetarian. Does she know how to cook them?”

“I don’t think it’s a science. You just drop them in water. Listen,” he said, putting his hands on her shoulders and looking at her straight on in a way that made him appear very brave. “I have to tell you this and I’d rather not: Ariel is coming out for a couple of days.”

Many things were possible but Franny and Ariel in the same house was not one of them. For Ariel’s sake Franny stayed out of the entire neighborhood surrounding Gramercy Park when she went to New York. It was the single way they respected one another: they did not overlap. “She wouldn’t come out when she knows I’m here,” Franny said. “I answered the phone.”

“I think she really just wants to see the house. I made the mistake of telling her about it months ago. I didn’t think we were going to rent it then. She said she needs a vacation.”

Franny was distracted by the scratching. The boxes, she could see now, were shuffling across the table in microscopic increments. The thought of each separate lobster in the dark was every bit as excruciating as the thought of Ariel Posen coming to Amagansett, either that or she was experiencing some sort of emotional transference. Leo followed her gaze to the table.

“I should have been a pair of ragged claws,” he said, looking at the sad containers trying to get away. “Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.”

“Leo, she hates me. That’s been made clear.”

Leo mustered the energy for a wan smile. “Well, maybe this is the summer she stops hating you and we all get along. It’s got to happen sooner or later.”

“When?” Franny asked. Not When will she stop hating me?—Franny knew the answer to that one—but When is she coming?

He sighed and pulled her to him, the wide, warm chest of literature. “She didn’t know. Probably tomorrow, possibly Tuesday. She said if she got everything together she could come out tonight, but I don’t think we need to worry about tonight.”

“Is she bringing Button?” Button was Ariel’s daughter, the four-year-old granddaughter of Leo Posen, the only grandchild.

Leo looked at her, surprised. “Of course she’s bringing Button.”

Of course. “Anyone else?”

Leo went to the refrigerator and found a bottle of pinot gris unfinished from lunch. He poured what was left in a glass sitting out on the sink. “Maybe a boyfriend. There’s someone named Gerrit. I think he’s Dutch. She said she didn’t know what Gerrit’s plans were yet. She might be on better behavior if she has someone to impress.”

“Should I, after tea and cakes and ices, have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?” Franny asked the lobsters.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Leo said.

Franny shook her head. “Nothing. It’s the next line.”

“It’s not the next line,” he said, and took his wine out to the porch.

Franny put a pair of scissors in her purse and carried the six boxes out to the car. Franny, who felt herself to be without talent, was very adept at carrying more things than anyone would have thought possible. She could feel the lobsters scrabble as their bodies slid heavily into the dark cardboard corners of the boxes.

“Need a hand?” Jonas said, speeding up his pace when he saw her. He was coming back from the pool, his chest and back unevenly scorched.

“I’ve got it,” she said, setting the boxes down to open the car door.

“Are you going into town?”

“Back into town.” She arranged her passengers on the floor of the backseat—three on either side.

“Let me just run inside and get my shirt,” he said, his face bright with opportunity. “I need some things in town. I’ll keep you company.”

She started to tell him no, to explain, but instead she nodded. She waited until the kitchen door had closed behind him, waited another ten seconds, and then got in the car and drove away.