The Perfect Couple(50)
The weekend before Merritt’s birthday, Tag and Greer are on Nantucket. Greer has a three-hour meeting with Roger Pelton, the wedding planner. Tag goes for a ride in the kayak, then he drives into town to get lunch—he loves the soft-shell crab sandwich from Straight Wharf Fish—and while he’s at it, he decides to buy Merritt a present. He has been trained by Greer to understand that the only acceptable present for a birthday or anniversary is jewelry. He walks into the Jessica Hicks boutique thinking he will get earrings or a choker, but when he describes the young woman he’s buying for—he pretends the gift is for his daughter-in-law, Abby, who is pregnant with their first grandchild—Jessica shows him the silver ring with the lace pattern embedded with the multicolored sapphires.
“It’s meant to be worn on the thumb,” Jessica says.
“The thumb?” Tag says.
“Trust me,” Jessica says. “It’s a thing.”
Tag buys the thumb ring and leaves the store feeling a sense of giddy anticipation. The ring is beautiful; Merritt will love it, he’s certain.
His happiness is a thing.
On the eighteenth, Tag gets to the hotel early. He has had a bouquet of expensive roses delivered to the room as well as champagne. He sets the box from Jessica Hicks between the flowers and the ice bucket. Everything is as it should be, but he can’t relax. Something about this scenario makes him feel like a run-of-the-mill cheat. He’s a stereotype, a middle-aged man sleeping with one of his daughter-in-law’s friends because his wife is busy and distracted and he needs to boost his self-esteem.
He waits in the room for Merritt to arrive but she texts to say she’s at the salon getting a bikini wax and she’ll be late. He’s a bit turned off by her frankness. Is it necessary to tell him she’s getting waxed? It feels inelegant.
He decides to go down to the bar for a drink. A real drink.
As soon as he walks into the bar, he locks eyes with a man, then he realizes with horror that the man is his son Thomas. Before Tag can think better of it, he ducks behind a pole. He waits a few seconds, not breathing, his heart skidding to a near stop as he waits for Thomas to confront him and ask what he’s doing there. What should Tag say? Meeting a client for drinks, of course, and then when the client doesn’t materialize, Tag can pretend to be annoyed and skip out to make a phone call.
He waits. Nothing happens. Tag saw Thomas, but is it possible that Thomas didn’t see Tag or saw him but somehow didn’t register the face as that of his father?
Enough time passes that Tag decides to take action. He peers around the column. Thomas is staring into his highball glass. He looks miserable. As much as Tag realizes the urgency of him leaving the bar while he can, he’s arrested by his elder son’s demeanor. He thinks back to the phone call from Sergio. Thomas is leaving work early; Thomas is taking unscheduled vacations. And now here he is having a drink at a hotel bar at the far tip of Manhattan, which isn’t anywhere close to his office. Tag wants to sit down next to Thomas and ask him what’s going on.
Maybe he’s been fired?
Maybe Abby lost the baby?
If it’s either of those, Tag will find out soon enough. He needs to get out of the bar undetected. He turns and hurries out, hoping Thomas won’t recognize him from behind. He goes back up to the room for his bag and texts Merritt.
Something came up. Room 1011 is yours for the night. There’s champagne and a little gift for you. But I have to take a raincheck. Sorry about that. Happy birthday, Parkway.
Tag takes a taxi back uptown and walks into his apartment to find Greer in her yoga clothes, folded over in child’s pose on the living-room rug. She looks up and beams. “You’re home!” she says.
And just like that, the spell is broken. Tag is finished fooling around. He is back to being a dutiful husband, a steadfast father, and an expectant grandfather. Merritt calls in tears; she leaves messages, sends texts. She calls him a bastard, she tells him to stick a fork in his eye, only that’s not how she phrases it.
She calls Tag’s office and speaks to Miss Hillery, Tag’s very proper, very British secretary, who is so devoted to Tag that she followed him over from London.
“A Ms. Parkway called?” Miss Hillery says, handing Tag the message slip. “She said it’s urgent.”
“Thank you, Miss Hillery,” Tag says with what he hopes is a carefree smile. He closes the door to his office and collapses at his desk. Merritt calling him at the office is one step away from Merritt calling the apartment or—because Tag knows Celeste might naively give Merritt the number—calling Greer’s cell phone.
Well, she’s going to get what she wants. Tag calls Merritt back.
“Tag?” she says.
“What on God’s green earth are you doing?” he asks. “You can’t call me here.”
“I’m pregnant,” she says.
Saturday, July 7, 2018, 12:00 p.m.
NANTUCKET
By midmorning, the entire island is buzzing with news of the Murdered Maid of Honor. Marty Szczerba calls his daughter, Laura Rae, initially just to hear the sound of her voice and to reassure himself that she is okay, but then he asks about Adi Conover—is she okay?—and Laura Rae says, “Yes, Dad, obviously. What’s wrong with you?” Marty ends up spilling the whole story, or what he knows of it. Laura Rae tells her fiancé, Ty, who works for Toscana Excavating and who is as tight-lipped as they come. But Ty swings by his mother’s house for a second breakfast and he tells her the story. Carla, Ty’s mother, volunteers at the Hospital Thrift Shop Saturdays at noon and she proceeds to tell every single person who walks in the door.