The High Season(50)

“It won’t.”

“You sound sure of something that just began.”

“It’s been more than a month.”

“Oh, come on. Did you start sleeping together the day she came?”

Under any other circumstances, the look on Mike’s face would have been comical.

“I’m sorry. What can I say? It was the thunderbolt. Wasn’t this inevitable for one of us?”

Inevitable? Sure. Maybe. She had braced herself for Mike’s first girlfriend, his lovers. If he’d had one or two, she hadn’t known.

“I’m in love,” he said.

She dropped her head in her hands and laughed. Her head pounded, the headache back in force now.

“You’re in love,” she said. “The two of you. Wouldn’t you say that there are some obvious differences between you?”

“She’s less than ten years older. She’s fifty-six.”

Ruthie raised one eyebrow.

“She has money. Yes. I get it, Ruthie. She travels in circles in New York that I’ve never had access to. But she’s just a girl who grew up on a farm. She came here from California and became a waitress. She happened to fall in love with an artist.”

“Oh, my God. Is that what she said? ‘I’m just a girl from a farm’? Are you kidding me? Is that how she presents her story? Peter Clay was famous when she met him. He was thirty years older than she was!”

“She loved him.”

“So did his wife and child.”

“You know they had a terrible marriage. You told me what it was like. Peter fell in love with her. He pursued her. She was young—”

    “She was past thirty. She was an aging waitress in a SoHo restaurant who saw her chance. She took what she wanted. And now she’s taking you.”

Mike’s face flushed. “She’s not taking me. Nobody’s being taken, nobody’s going anywhere.”

“Yes, she has a sudden whim for the simple life. She’s trying it on with her handyman. She likes to remake herself every five years, and hey, perfect timing, you show up with a pickup truck and a hammer.”

“Have you been talking to Lucas?”

“Why do you say that?”

“If I were you, I’d stay away from him. She’s been bailing him out for years.”

“And now she’s bailing you! How sweet. What’s going to happen when she goes back to New York? Are you going to put on a suit—she’ll buy it, of course—and go with her to those charity events? Get photographed? Wait, I can see the headline now—the carpenter and the lady.”

Another hit. Mike pressed his lips together and looked away. This was exhilarating. Ruthie had crossed over to a new realm of combat, where you actually can say whatever you want. Even in their worst arguments when they were married they were careful to stay away from the most bitter truths about each other. They never stuck in the blade and wiggled it.

But this? This felt fine.

“You were never mean like this,” Mike said.

And didn’t he count on that? Didn’t everyone? “I’m just getting started.”

“I can’t see the future,” Mike said. “Who can? I just know I’ve never felt like this before.”

Ruthie’s breath whistled out her nose.

“I’m sorry, but it’s true,” Mike said. “And if you’re honest, you can admit that what we had was love, absolutely, but it never felt…fated. We were never swept away.”

“And her money has nothing to do with it,” she said. “That’s hilarious. Poor you, brought up a Dutton, a legacy to Choate and Yale. You got every advantage a rich white boy gets. Except the inheritance. And now you’ve got it. Money and connections. Are you going to be an artist again, Mike? Hang out with Tom McGreevy? Be introduced to his dealer?” She looked at his face. “Oh, that’s already happened, hasn’t it? She’s a fast mover.” She laughed. “Well, I knew that already.”

    “Thanks for the confidence, sweetheart. Did you ever think that an art dealer might be interested in my work? You never thought I was good enough—”

“I did! I thought you were good enough!” She tossed her coffee on the lawn. “It was you who quit! You always quit when things get hard. Well, you’ve got your insulation back. Your privilege. Just check your balls at the door. Don’t worry, she’ll buy you a new pair!”

He rose angrily, and she followed him. “You’ll sit at their tables. You’ll tell your stories with a glass of wine in your hand and they’ll laugh—”

“Stop it!”

“—and you’ll get what you always wanted in the bargain. What you never really had.”

“Don’t fucking say it.”

She spit the words out in his face. “A mommy.”

His skin stretched tight on his face, his mouth a bloodless line. “I have never been so close to hitting you as I am right now.”

“Go ahead! Make it worse! Let’s just burn down the whole barn!”

In a sudden movement that made Mike rear back, she picked up the side table. Her coffee cup went skittering as she threw the table into the pool. They watched it sink.

“What the hell, Ruthie! This isn’t you!” He came toward her with such ferocity she shrank back. “We were never an us,” he said. “I tried. You never made room for an us.”