The High Season(52)

    From: Ruth Beamish

To: Carole Berlinger Subject: need advice Carole, the merde hit the fan at the meeting. I resigned. I found out that Catha has been campaigning for my job. I know you’re exploring stone circles or something but can you write back? I need advice! And tranquilizers.

Thx, xo r

From: Catha Lugner

To: Ruth Beamish

Subject: this mess


Ruthie,

Crazy times, huh? Mindy said you were leaving and asked me to step up. I hope you can recognize that it’s for the good of the institution that we both worked so hard for. I’m sure there will be exciting new things on the horizon for you! Midlife change is awesome. Let’s stay friends during this transitional time! I sent you and Jem a basket from Locavoracious. Be on the lookout!

xo CSL

From: Catha

To: Ruthie

Subject: disappointed There really was no need to throw the basket on my porch. The raccoons dragged all the food all over the lawn. I’m sorry you can’t be an adult about this.

From: Ruthie

To: Catha

Re: disappointed

Fuck you, Iago.

From: Penny Kaplan

To: Ruth Beamish

I just heard. Holy shit!

…The Chinese ideogram for crisis is danger and opportunity you know. You could get a tattoo.

From: Elena Serrano To: Ruth Beamish

I’m starting a petition for reinstatement. Come over for coffee.





29


PENNY ADDED A plop of whiskey to Ruthie’s coffee. Ruthie had sat in the same chair at the kitchen table when she told them Mike was leaving her. Penny had leaned toward her in the very same way, her fists on the table. Ruthie had the same expectation, that Penny would excoriate her enemy and then map out a plan for a new life.

“That Mindy,” Penny said. “She’s a venomous…ah, mealworm. And Catha. Didn’t I tell you? A smug, self-aggrandizing cardboard lady.”

“Cardboard lady?”

“Look, I think we can turn this around,” Elena said. “I’ve been making calls. People are outraged. They know you made the Belfry what it is. You are a part of this community. We can get up a petition. You have a huge amount of support.”

“Please don’t,” Ruthie said. “It won’t do any good. And frankly, if we cause a fuss it could impact my severance. Mindy has a hotshot attorney from Manhattan. The nondisclosure is like I worked for deep ops.”

“We can’t let them get away with it!” Penny cried.

    “Worse things happen every day, and you know it,” Ruthie said.

“That’s my point,” Penny declared, waving her mug. “What’s wrong with people? Is lying and betrayal not only okay now, but you actually get rewarded for it?”

“Yes!” Ruthie and Elena said together.

“I need to tell you something else,” Ruthie said. “That. Mike,” she got out. “Is sleeping. With Adeline Clay. Since Memorial Day weekend!”

“Wow,” Penny said. “I mean, oh. Bastard.”

She saw by their faces that they hadn’t known, and she felt better. Elena and Penny dragged their chairs closer to surround her, and Elena held one hand and Penny held another, and she told them how she found out, and that she’d thrown a glass and chopped down a tree (muffled guffaw from Penny), and how she was a mouse with a collapsing skeleton, and that her life was shit.

Penny squeezed her hand. “You know this was inevitable.”

“It was either you or him,” Elena said. “Somebody was going to get a lover.”

“You two seemed to be able to do it, but nobody can really do it,” Penny said.

“You can’t sleep with your ex on a regular basis without paying the piper,” Elena said.

“Sleep with my ex?” Ruthie looked from Elena to Penny.

Penny’s head bobbed backward in a gesture she knew well. “You and Mike aren’t still sleeping together?”

“We just assumed…” Elena said.

“Or else how did it work?” Penny asked.

“We’re friends,” Ruthie said. “I mean, we were.”

“But…neither one of you was ever with anyone else since the divorce,” Penny said. “You saw each other all the time.”

“And it’s been three years,” Elena said.

Penny and Elena exchanged glances.

Elena patted her knee. “Now, let’s just sit here and look at this. Mike is having a summer affair. A ridiculous summer affair with a ridiculous summer woman, so obviously it will end by Labor Day.”

    “Am I really this pathetic that I need to hear that?”

“You’re not pathetic, sweetie,” Penny said. “No matter how you look right now. Look, can I say this? Mike set this up. I love him, I do—though I’m really, really mad at him right now—but he’s the one who insisted that you could be friends. He pursued that, doll. He was so guilty about breaking up his family and so terrified at losing Jem that he made the rules. He came up with the Wednesday-night dinner and the cookouts and the sitting together at school events.”

“And he was the one who put off the divorce. He wanted to be an intact family without the commitment,” Elena said.