The Winters(11)

I scanned through more pictures of the ten bedrooms, guessing theirs was the one described as “the most ethereal perch on Long Island.” There was the great hall, with its gleaming paneled walls, the second-floor gallery lined with famous oil paintings of Max’s ancestors, the prominence of the portrait artists growing along with the Winters’ wealth. Though the kitchen looked more rustic than I had expected, with its pale green painted cupboards and black-and-white-checkered floor, it highlighted Rebekah’s talent for updating the house while preserving its original aesthetic. The barn looked old, but was, in fact, a state-of-the-art facility for prized Thoroughbred horses, one of Rebekah’s passions. But the home’s centerpiece was a star-shaped greenhouse, its spires asymmetrical and dramatic, designed by a famous architect whom Rebekah persuaded to come out of retirement. Its jagged modernity clashed with the traditional design of Asherley and generated equal parts praise and criticism, one Times article calling it “utterly monstrous,” which prompted Rebekah to scold him in an op-ed titled “Why Some Monsters Are Beautiful.”

My trance was broken by the loud music coming from John-John’s yacht chugging by, the passengers already drunk by dusk. After giving him a blithe wave, I sped up my search, scanning an Architectural Digest piece about the renovations. There she was posing in a gown in front of old kitchen appliances that were actually clever modern replicas. Whatever seemed old about Asherley was usually, in fact, a modern reproduction. The last picture in this spread was of Max and Dani, her looking too grown-up in a sky-blue minidress, Max with his arm around his daughter’s tiny waist, their heads touching in the way of couples, her long blond hair a golden drape between them.

I slumped into the chair feeling sick, as if I’d rocketed back from another continent whose language and customs were entirely unfamiliar to me. This was followed by an overwhelming sense of shame, not from the snooping but from allowing myself the fantasy, however brief, that Max Winter might have found me attractive company today, me, a nobody from nothing, going nowhere. I laughed out loud at my own idiocy, at the notion that this wealthy, attractive man, this widowed senator, once married to a woman like Rebekah, who produced a child like Dani, who grew up on his own island in a castle with a name, might think of me as anything more than the hired pilot of his rented boat. He brought me that food out of courtesy. He took that (one) picture of me not to treasure it later but to fill an awkward gap in our conversation. This is what Laureen had meant when she said only another larger-than-life woman could fill Rebekah’s shoes, could occupy the space she had taken up in their lives, in the world even. I was not only jealous of her, I was furious with myself for harboring, even for a day, such naive ideas about what Max Winter was doing with me. Images of Rebekah were now seared into my retinas. I could no longer see him without seeing her with him.

But I had done this to myself. I had invited her in. In my darkest days, I sometimes had to remind myself that it started here, in that moment, and that it wasn’t Rebekah who came after me. I was the one who went looking for her.





SIX


During that strange and potent month, it did not take long for us to become easy, constant companions, something Max seemed utterly blasé about, but I attributed my own comfort to putting an abrupt end to my investigations into his and Rebekah’s life. I had to. It was making me sick. I was like a potential addict who, after sampling heroin once, realized its easy, deadly appeal and vowed never to do it again. I decided to simply enjoy “it” while “it” lasted, whatever “it” was. I knew I was incomparable to Rebekah Winter in every way, and I decided jealousy was arrogance in disguise. As if I could compete with her. Even dead she was more fascinating than my own living presence. And Max, he was so “other” to me that my place in his life could only be fleeting, even while I was standing next to him at the helm of a boat or enjoying a furtive meal on the other side of the island. (In my defense we had not so much as kissed by that point, so I had no idea how much sex would irrevocably shift my understanding of what was, indeed, growing between us.) Also absent in those early days was any significant time spent around other people, which meant our courtship grew inside a vacuum. With no witnesses to comment on its existence, I was left uncertain sometimes whether any of it was real. One day Max was not in my life, the next he was with me almost daily, never at the club, only at the dock if he was taking out a boat that needed a captain (me, of course), which he’d done a dozen more times since our first trip, often enough to arouse John-John’s concern, not necessarily regarding any impropriety on my part but rather with my seeming inability to help Max catch any good fish.

Much of what I had to do for Laureen involved nightly visits to her “palazzo,” as she called her house, to take in mail and water plants. Max insisted on accompanying me. Our initial visit happened the very night after our first cruise. At the end of my long shift I was heading to the staff parking lot on the other side of the highway to use the company truck. Max spotted me from his rental car and rolled down his window, slowing his speed to match my pace.

“You need a ride somewhere, lady?”

That was after my deep dive into his and Rebekah’s life, so it was jarring to see him in person. But there he was, real, and right beside me, talking to me, asking to be in my company. Again.

“I don’t get into cars with strangers,” I said. “Besides, I’m just going to the parking lot.”