The High Season(40)
“Naturally I’ll be a reference for you,” Helen said. “You were the best director we ever had.”
“Well, thanks for that,” Ruthie said. “You just lost me.”
“I know, and I’m so sorry about that. I feel terrible. Let me tell you something. I’ve lived a long time, and I know that you can’t hold back change. The good news is, you’re fabulous.”
Ruthie stepped on the gas.
She couldn’t fight this. She’d been in the museum business long enough to know that starting a board fight would be disastrous. Helen wouldn’t stand up for her, none of them would, because there was no reason to act on principle when social comfort was involved. The women on the board bumped into one another all summer; they served on other boards together, they went to the same restaurants, the same shops, the same parties. They exchanged the same recommendations of the same Parisian bistros. They ran into one another all over the world, or at least the parts sanctioned by their travel agents. Why would they risk unpleasantness? Just for her? They were used to listening to authority. They were trained that way, the last generation of gentlewomen (Ruthie prayed!) who were passed down from father to husband and told to dress well, set a good table, and shut the fuck up.
22
SHE EMAILED CAROLE—Meeting a disaster, please call me!—but the email bounced back.
Hello darlings, I am off the grid (yes, me, can you believe it?) roughing it in the fabulous Hebrides with my kids! I’ll be back online by July 14 if we don’t get kidnapped by the Loch Ness Monster. Love and kisses, Carole
Probably not a good idea to write Carole at this particular moment, anyway. One should fulminate with the trusted, not the trustee. She drove to Mike’s apartment. She texted him as she parked, starting to hiccup panic now.
No answer. The man always forgot to charge his phone. She knocked on the door. No answer.
CALL ME, she texted. And then, the absurd CHARGE YOUR PHONE!
She drove back to Orient and turned down Village Lane. She glided past the store, past the pie shop, the yacht club, past the cottages. Her town. Her beloved town. Her house. Her beloved house. Without the job at the Belfry, how could they keep it? The second mortgage, the taxes…
Adeline’s Range Rover was in her driveway. Plus a flash of yellow through the bushes. She pulled over and got out. Screened by the bush, Mike’s truck was parked awkwardly to the side, its wheels halfway on the lawn, almost smack into the dwarf lilac tree that Helen had given her when she’d taken the job.
She thought he’d fixed the step, the leak, the window, the chores that had eaten up his June. It was almost six o’clock now, and he would be heading home.
As she approached the house she heard voices from the rear, and then the sound of Mike laughing.
“Hello?” she called, and heard the scrape of a chair.
“We’re out back!” Adeline called.
When she rounded the side of the house, Adeline was half out of her chair, turning toward her with a smile of welcome that faltered when she saw Ruthie. Mike was sitting back, his ankle propped on a knee. There were two glasses of white wine on the table and a bottle sitting in the thermal cooler she’d bought for summer guests. Two bottles of water sat, politely condensing. A tray of empty glasses stood next to it. A bowl of olives. Mike’s olives, the ones he made with Pernod and orange peel and fennel seed. She could smell it from here, licorice and citrus and garlic.
“Ruthie! I thought you were Roberta,” Adeline said. “I’m expecting a caravan, actually. Lucas is meeting everyone at the ferry and leading them here. The McGreevys, a few others. You know the McGreevys, right?”
“A little,” Ruthie said. Tom McGreevy was a blue-chip artist who lived on Shelter Island, which meant he was Hamptons, not North Fork. She’d been trying to get him to the Belfry for years.
Adeline was wearing saffron-colored capri pants and a fuchsia silk T-shirt, making Ruthie feel like a bundle of dry newsprint in her now wrinkled black shift. The breeze brought Ruthie a scent of Adeline’s perfume.
Mike stood. His hair was brushed, and his shirt was pressed. It took Ruthie several long seconds to realize that he wasn’t just having a drink before leaving, he was a guest at the party.
“I should go,” she said, just as car doors slammed and they heard voices.
“Stay for a drink,” Adeline urged. “We’re out back!” she called, and started toward the side of the house.
“We have to talk,” Ruthie said to Mike.
“I know.” Mike looked miserable, as if he’d already heard. You couldn’t quit a job in this town without the news going out in five minutes.
The group suddenly swirled around the side of the house, the tall, stylish McGreevys, Lucas, and a heavyset woman with flyaway gray hair to her shoulders who had to be Roberta. She had expected a woman like Adeline, thin, supple, and expensively dressed. But this woman was tall and twice the size of Lucas. Her dress was loose fitting and the color of red clay. She should be selling her own honey in a farmers market, not attending a chic dinner party.
Then Joe rounded the corner, nicely dressed in jeans and a blue shirt, and holding a bottle of wine. He looked surprised, then pleased, to see her.
“You’re right, this is a spectacular view,” Roberta said in a booming voice. “I’m dying for a drink. Tom and Lilah gave me nothing. I’m parched.”