The High Season(20)

They hadn’t seen her yet. They were listening intently to Catha, who was speaking rapidly. There was a glittering excitement on her face that sent a trickle of foreboding through Ruthie.

Catha dressed like Hollywood’s idea of an executive assistant, pencil skirts and jewel-necked tops and shoes with pointed toes that just might conceal a shiv. Her small dark eyes were bright with birdlike attention, and she accentuated the association by moving her head forward like a pigeon after she made an especially trenchant point.

Ruthie had offered the job of deputy director to Catha five years ago, when she was drowning in overwork and needed help. She had known Catha slightly, the way one vaguely knew almost everyone in a small town, and she knew Catha had once been a marketing person (Ruthie had only a vague idea of what a marketing person did, exactly) at a cable network. One day she’d spotted her weeping in the produce section in the Southold grocery store. Ruthie had approached her tentatively to see if she could help. Catha had clutched endive to her bosom and confided the problem. Bobbing her head down and forward, she’d announced that her oldest daughter, Whitney, had decided to go to Wesleyan instead of Smith. Ruthie waited for a distressing anecdote to follow this news, but that appeared to be the tragedy. “I always confused Wesleyan with Wellesley,” she’d told Catha, revealing her plebeian origins, and Catha had shaken her head, button eyes bright with tears, and said, “Wellesley would have been excellent. But this…” She cast the endive into her cart in despair.

    Rather than dismissing Catha as a crashing snob, Ruthie had decided on the spot that any woman who possessed that amount of rabid attention to status could come in handy at a museum. So, even though Catha had no museum experience, Ruthie had hired her. She had always considered Catha her best hire, except for her tendency to avoid responsibility for missteps and take credit for every success. In the job evaluation in her head (and only in her head; Ruthie eschewed job evaluations) Ruthie would have checked off the Not a Team Player box.

Yet Catha was her friend. Had been her friend? It wasn’t clear, suddenly. Once, they’d gone for drinks after work together. They’d confided in each other about kids and husbands. Ruthie knew the intimate details of the six-month period when Catha was thinking of leaving her husband, Larry. One evening she and Jem and Catha and Emerson had gone to Shelter Island for a dinner to celebrate Emerson’s graduation from college (Wellesley!), and it had been a magical night. On the way back on the ferry they’d gotten out of their cars and watched the lights moving on the dark water. “I just know we’ll be friends forever,” Catha had said, slipping her arm through Ruthie’s. That had been only a year ago. When had that feeling stopped? How many cues had she missed?

    Clearly she was interrupting some kind of conspiracy, but whether it was about her or the color of the tablecloths she couldn’t say for sure. Board ladies could be fierce about tablecloths. She tamped down her unease and walked toward them.

Three faces turned toward her. She had a sudden vision of her father’s fish store, the fish laid out on ice, staring eyes liquid and opaque.

“I didn’t realize we had a meeting,” Ruthie said.

“It’s not a meeting, we’re just chatting,” Catha said with a sunny smile.

She had hardly advanced a step when Mindy said, “Did you know that Daniel Mantis is Adeline Clay’s boyfriend?”

“I would think that you would know about Daniel Mantis,” Gloria said. She blinked rapidly. “Catha says his art collection is world-class.”

“Of course I know who he is,” Ruthie said. “He summers in East Hampton.”

“He has a fabulous estate,” Mindy said. “It was in Architectural Digest. We were talking about Gus Romany just now. I’ve been researching his artwork. Nobody ever accused me of not being prepared! Have you seen his killing chickens series?”

“He strangles a chicken!” Gloria interrupted. She mimicked whirling a chicken in the air.

Ruthie winced. “That doesn’t sound like his work. When was this?”

“It’s all over the Internet,” Catha said. “Nineteen seventy.”

“Oh, that makes sense.”

“Strangling a chicken makes sense?” Gloria asked.

“I mean, it was over forty years ago. Shock art was part of a whole—”

“So graphic.” Mindy shuddered. “Do we really want to sponsor that sort of content?”

    “How are we sponsoring it?” Ruthie asked. “We’re not showing the work. We’re honoring him for his service to the museum.”

“It’s a video and it’s on our Instagram account,” Catha said. She held out the phone, but it was impossible to see it and she kept it out of Ruthie’s reach.

“Doe posted it?” she asked.

“You mean you don’t supervise Instagram posts?” Mindy asked.

“Well, technically, Catha is her supervisor.”

“Arnie always says, if you’re the boss, don’t pass the buck,” Gloria said.

“Don’t you check the museum Instagram every morning?” Mindy asked.

“I really think the psychographic of our core members is in opposition to this,” Catha said. “Come on, we’re getting solar panels next year.”