The High Season(42)

“No, you mean Air.”

“No, Eon.”

And then Mike was saying, “No, it only looks like the Wall Street guys are running things. Isn’t culture what really matters now? Well, that and shopping. No, I’m serious. Isn’t that our biggest export? The creative class is really ruling the world, we just aren’t interested in power. Yet. Can you imagine if all the artists and designers went on strike? The next war could be between the suits and the talent, I’m telling you.”

She’d heard this theory before, at other dinner parties. These people were smiling. Tom McGreevy chuckled. Adeline had the glowing look of a woman delighted that her lover was pleasing her friends.

He suddenly looked so at home here, among these people.

Of course, he was at home. So was Ruthie. Except she wasn’t. Ruthie had drunk a glass of wine very, very fast, but this much unsteadiness didn’t come from the gorgeous Sancerre.

    “I get what you’re saying,” Tom said.

“Clearly we need to organize,” Lilah said.

“Do you want to leave?” Joe asked her in a low tone. Maybe she was weaving? Or steaming? Or stamping? She didn’t know. Something new seemed to be in charge of her body. Some wild energy, an untamed, bucking mare.

“No,” Ruthie said, and she realized that she’d shouted it.

The heads turned. Mike looked scared. How nice.

“No,” Ruthie said, “I haven’t dined at Eon, or was it Air…or was it Id? And I haven’t seen anybody sing from their uterus, that’s a treat I’ll look forward to, along with the galleys of the next DeLillo, the intimate tour of Matisse, that divine private concert with Joshua Bell—talk about a cultural high colonic! Right, Mike, I mean Michael?”

Did she just shout that, too?

Everyone was half turned, looking at her.

“Ruthie…” Adeline said, and stopped.

“I’m sorry, allergies,” Ruthie said. “You know. ’Tis the season. I’m allergic to entitlement. The air is just so thick with it.”

They all faced her, frozen, drinks held, Roberta mechanically spitting out an olive pit in her hand, her eyes on Ruthie. Lucas, laughing.

“Let me take you home,” Joe murmured.

“I am home,” she said. “That’s the funny thing.”





23


MIKE’S FACE WAS the last one she registered—comically horrified, his mouth open—before she ran. She rounded the corner of the house, stumbling as though she had her shoes on the wrong feet. She struck out across the lawn. She realized she was still holding the wineglass, and she turned and hurled it at the porch. She heard the smash of it breaking. What a pleasant sound! Like tiny bells. Like the striking seconds of a quarter-million-dollar watch.

Joe hurried toward her but stopped a few feet away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a hell of a way to find out.”

“Does everyone know except for me?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know who knows. I’ll give you a ride home.”

“I don’t need a ride. I’m not drunk. I’m sorry to spoil the party. But go back. Enjoy my view!” Why was she furious at Joe? She didn’t know. “I’m sorry. I really, really want to be alone,” she added.

“Ruthie—”

“Please. Please go.”

    She walked down the path, past the rocks that edged the lawn, beach stones that she and Jem had collected, the roundest, whitest ones they could find, and then carefully laid down together. She glanced behind. Joe had gone back to the party.

Helen’s dwarf lilac had never really thrived in that spot. They’d always meant to move it. The branches with blossoms fanned out from a spindly trunk that had never grown past four feet or so. And Ruthie came to dislike its tight, selfish petals. She preferred the full-grown lilac bush, blowsy in its confidence.

She thought of Helen’s droit-du-seigneur smile as she took Ruthie’s life in her teeth and shook it. Mindy couldn’t help being Mindy. Was it even worth it to despise her? She was just a sad thing, powering through life with the manic aggression of a person who felt unloved, even by her own mother. With that kind of need matched to that kind of money, casualties occurred offstage. Mindy’s treachery was impersonal, because Ruthie had never been a person to her at all.

But Carole, disappearing with a blithe “see what they have to say,” knowing the bad news was coming? Catha, whom she’d worked side by side with for five years? Helen?

She crossed to the shed. She dug into her pocket for her keys and unlocked the door. Moist heat rolled out, redolent with damp cardboard and earth. The shed was crammed to the roof with their off-season life. Boxes full of sweaters, quilts, blankets, financial records, bathrobes, slippers, knickknacks, books, extra dishes, the second-best pots and pans. Shoehorned in there somewhere were boxes they hadn’t opened since they left Tribeca, another life. So many things that only made clutter, that caused closet doors not to close and drawers to stick, that stacked up in teetering piles in linen closets. Her life.

It should have made her feel sad. A life small enough to fit in a shed.

Instead it was as though she’d discovered a lost continent of rage.

The voice came from behind her. “Can I help?”