The High Season(33)
“It’s all such a compromise,” Mike said. “Can’t hang my paintings because they aren’t neutral enough, have to have only white sheets and towels so that we can bleach them, only white paint, white plates, white cups, white fucking slipcovers.” He shook a white plate at her. This is our life! he’d shouted. This crummy white plate!
What are you talking about, crummy? It’s Williams Sonoma!
The plate had been Frisbeed against the wall, and shattered. Crockery had been thrown. Ruthie had stared at the shards and thought, Well, it’s only a salad plate. How bad could this be?
Within six months, he’d moved out.
She rose and went to the window. How funny life was. She had stood with a billionaire admiring his fifty-million-dollar painting (How much were Rothkos now, worth unimaginable for one person to afford, yet they did, mere museums could no longer afford to buy these paintings…sixty million? Eighty?) while wearing couture and (possibly) a quarter of a million dollars on her wrist. Had Daniel’s notice of the watch changed her in his eyes, was that the meaning of the warmer look, the reevaluation of her importance?
There was a whole world around her in this blessed landscape, with these beautiful people, that took these exquisite things as a given. Something painted out of anguish could sit on a wall and be worth fifty times her house, something purchased for ornament on a wrist could change a life. This was the stuff of revolutions, she supposed. But that never worked. This was the way of things. Money was the golden square. The fulcrum of the turning world.
If you held the thing that could change everything, if it could ease your anguish, repair what had been broken…if it could give you exactly what you wanted…would you just toss it back in a box?
She pushed the slider again. Ding ding ding…She heard the music of time marked, and even as she listened, she felt it pass.
Out the wide window, she finally spotted her family. Finally, there they were, her people. They stood talking to Adeline on the lawn. Strange how she’d been to two parties with Adeline and had yet to have a conversation. Ruthie was always on the opposite side of the gathering. Mike slung an arm around Jem as he laughed at something Adeline said. Sunlight on blond heads, a sky like a vault, a shimmering sea. Gold and blue.
Ruthie felt a wave of displacement take her over, and she placed her hands on the glass. She had a sudden urge to beat against it. The connectors to Mike, to Jem, already stretched (divorce, adolescence), now vibrated in her chest, close to a snap. Heart strings, she thought. She felt as fragile as paper, the fishmonger’s daughter gazing down at royalty so fine it could only be envied, not overthrown.
It was only a moment, only a trick of the eye. It was this dappled buttery light, this ravishment, this ridiculous overripe Renoir in a rich man’s garden, everything a stroke of pure pigment. It was not a premonition, she thought at that moment, though later, of course, she knew it was. Poor Ruthie! That pretty summer afternoon, she thought it could be happiness.
17
ALL JUNE, RUTHIE heard about Adeline. Adeline was enchanted by the yacht club and wanted to join, even though she didn’t sail. Adeline had bought an old bike and was spotted cycling down Narrow River Road. Adeline had asked when scallop season started and was startled to hear it was fall.
She read about her, too. Everyone did. They all clicked on the links. Her split with Daniel Mantis—that dramatic photograph of her holding up a hand, as if to hold him off, and Mantis looking like a thug—was splattered among the tabloids, but it was counted as a mark in her favor. She’d split with a billionaire!
They caught glimpses of her, driving into town, or her arms full of lavender walking down Village Lane. They liked her baggy shorts and Chucks. They liked how she made an effort to be just folks, even if she didn’t socialize with more than a wave.
Ruthie was always struck by how Adeline moved radiantly through the world as if it were arranging itself around her. It was either Botox or inner peace. She never got close enough to tell.
* * *
—
THE VILLAGE WAS filling when Ruthie arrived for the Heritage Day parade. People streamed out of their houses, holding coffee mugs and dog leashes, everyone dressed in various combinations of red, white, and blue. The parade was forming at the end of the street, beribboned tractors and wagons and kerchiefed dogs and children on bikes trailing streamers. It was a day when bunting had its moment. The annual reading of the Declaration of Independence would be followed by hot dogs in Poquatuck Park. Today no one cranked about politics; they were happy to celebrate America.
As Ruthie walked and waved, she pondered. An ominous email had slithered into her inbox that morning, and Ruthie was still anxious about its significance. It was the Fourth of July weekend. It was time to call in the French.
Ducking down a side street, she dialed the phone, and relief flooded her when Carole answered. She hit her with the information in a sputtering barrage like a faulty artillery gun—Mindy had asked for a meeting with Gloria and Helen to discuss “the next phase,” what the hell. She had a bad feeling. Did Carole know about this?
“Merde,” Carole said. “No idea. Things were going so well. Let me call her and I’ll call you back. Or maybe I should call Gloria. Oh, God, don’t make me call Gloria. Never mind. I’ll call someone and call you back.”