Enchanted August (2 page)

“You said it was fine for just you to go.”

“He manipulates us, Fred, even at three.” Oh, God! Now Ben! “We should have done more when he was younger. When he gets out of control it's tough. It's tough on Bea, too. He needs a stronger hand.” Was his sister already a victim? Was she an enabler? Ben was a pest at home. Sometimes he was. What must he be like at school?

“Do you think he's worse at school?” Fred asked.

“What do you mean, worse?” said Rose. For Fred to say it was treasonous. “Are you saying he's bad? Are you saying you want your three-year-old on medication?”

“Rose, I don't even think they give medication to three-year-olds.”

The rain was so loud she had to shout to hear herself. “She said they do! She knows excellent psychopharmacologists! Is that what you want for him? I don't even want him in the summer program there at this point.”

“Then what are you going to do with him this summer?” Fred said.

“What am
I
going to do?”

There was silence for a while.

“Rosie, we can't have this conversation on the phone,” Fred said. “Come home. Let's talk.”

She didn't want to go home. She didn't want to see Fred and she didn't want to talk. She walked fast and hard in the pounding rain. Why couldn't Ben be an easy child?
Rose
had been an easy child, her mother always said. Bea was an easy child. Teachers called her a joy. Even Patience was satisfied with Bea. Her stupid horse face had lit up when she'd mentioned Bea's name. What had gone wrong with Ben? She should have stayed home with him another year and not gone back to work. Her salary as an itinerate adjunct was practically worthless in their household economy, worse than useless. Had the genius gene been turned on in Fred and shut down in Ben? Why couldn't Ben just be like a
regular
kid?

Jesus Christ. Whose side was she on?

She turned a corner and saw that short woman, Ethan's mom, through the steamy window of Maisie's Coffees & Tease. Rose found herself walking through the glass door, picking her way through the damp sweatshirts and the slick Windbreakers and the burnt-coffee smell. Ethan's mom looked at her with her enormous brown eyes, not at all surprised.

“Please, can I just look at that place in Maine?” Rose asked. “Lottie?”

And without a word, Lottie pushed a steaming latte in front of her, helped her off with her dripping jacket, moved her tablet so they could both see the screen. They sat in silence together as Rose Google-Mapped Little Lost Island and rain fell against the glass.

R
ose got home ready for a lot of sympathy from Fred. She called up to him. “Are you here? Can you take a break for a minute? It was really bad with Patience.”

She went upstairs. The door to his study was open. He had his earphones on. He wasn't writing. He was watching a video. From what Rose could see, there was a lot of naked skin.

He jumped and turned around. The headphones tumbled off. “Busted,” he said.

“You're watching porn after your son was expelled from preschool?” Her blood surged. Fight or flight.

“He wasn't expelled, Rose. It's not porn. It's a movie. Look.”

She didn't want to look. “I was just completely crucified, Fred.” She actually felt her head trembling with the exertion not to hit him. “And you're watching
movies
.”

“I thought you'd come straight home. Where were you?”

Later, Rose didn't know whether it was that the whole school conversation had started on such a sour note; or that Fred loved his work more than he did her; or that Ben had suddenly gotten worse; or that Patience had made them believe they were a bad couple, so they became one; but by the end of the week, the idea Rose had nurtured at Maisie's, that they would all go to Hopewell Cottage together, seemed absurd. By the end of the month, Fred was sleeping on the couch in his study. And by the first steamy days of July, even though she wanted to fall exhausted into his arms and hear him call her Rosie and say they would work it out together, they'd both agreed that she would quit her jobs and home-preschool the kids as of September. She'd give up her free time in July so he could finish his latest book. She could do whatever she wanted in August. She needed some time away from all this, he told her. She needed some time to think.

Rose found Ethan's mom's number on her phone.

Do you think we could still go?

Lottie texted back.
I think we can.

It was odd, Robert SanSouci thought, the effect his tiny scrap of an ad had on people. He had never listed his family cottage with a real estate agent—not that one would, on Little Lost Island. He never rented the place out to friends. He just took his chances, and made sure the sign was in a spot where those who most needed it would see it. The Rule of Robert's Sign.

“It has that effect on people,” he said, and the woman in front of him at City Bakery turned around. “Not you,” he added by way of apology.

He'd learned, over the years, that the only families or couples or women—in fact, mostly women—who would take the plunge to rent Hopewell Cottage for a month were those for whom the stakes were highest.

He insisted on one meeting face-to-face, he insisted on a month, and he set the price sky-high. It worked: His system had always found him tenants worthy of the place. Most of them adored it, but not in the way he wanted them to. Now he was about to meet Rose Arbuthnot. The name alone sounded as if it belonged on the island. He took his coffee over to one of the uncomfortable banquettes and sat down at a tiny table. From here he'd have a view of the door and could guess which one she was. He'd really wanted to order a pretzel croissant but the crumbs always got in his beard. Some women didn't like beards.

Hardly anyone knew he had a place in Maine. It was crazy that he owned such a place. It was almost a cliché: He got a call from a lawyer in Pittsburgh about ten years ago. An aged cousin “had passed” and her legacy was a cottage in Maine and just enough to pay the yearly expenses for a decade or more. Robert was still in college and didn't even get there for the first two years. Then, when he finally made the trip—five hundred miles to the twisty peninsula, across a spit of water from Big Lost Island, up an exhausting hill to the place itself—he was overwhelmed. Stunned. He was born and raised outside Chapel Hill; his idea of a cottage was most people's idea of a cottage: a snug little place with a fireplace and a tiny elfin bedroom and a thatched roof. The thatched roof he knew wouldn't materialize, but this place? It was a castle. It was huge and—no other word for it—glorious. Also, it looked like it would blow away in a stiff wind.

The three women who walked through the door of City Bakery in a blast of humid air looked damp yet pleased with themselves. He didn't think any of them could be Rose Arbuthnot. None of those women would have texted him,
Tell me what to do
.

“Oh, there she is,” said Robert, again not entirely to himself. He knew he was right when a woman not at all like a rose opened the door and swept the place with her pale eyes. She looked like a painting. But which painting? Her eyes lit on him and he nodded. This was the one. This had to be the one.

The woman came over to him. “Mr. SanSouci?”

“Robert,” he said, and extended a hand. She had a firm handshake, which he was glad of. Her hands were dry and cool. She looked maybe a few years older than he was. He liked the crinkles around her eyes.

“Why don't you sit down,” he said, “and I'll get you something. Coffee? Cappuccino?”

“I'd love a cappuccino,” said Rose.

It was when he came back with the coffee that he realized what painting she looked like. She was that woman in the Andrew Wyeth paintings—not the famous one in the cornfield looking at the shack; the other one. The strapping blonde with the pale eyes who was nude half the time. He blushed. If there ever was a sign that someone belonged in his cottage, this was it. “Is your husband going too? Your family, I mean?” Tactless, so tactless! “I'm sorry,” he said, wondering if she was divorced, or gay, or desperately single like he was. “You get to take whomever you'd like. That's the rule of Hopewell. Whoever needs to go there gets to go there.” He sensed she would appreciate his use of who and whom, which he hoped he had gotten right.

“I'm taking the place with a friend—someone I know—Lottie Wilkes,” said Rose. “You may know her from Happy Circle Friends.”

“Happy Circle Friends?”

“Park Slope somewhere? Or President Pre?”

“Oh, the sign,” Robert said. “I asked the people who rented the cottage last year to put up a notice for me in Brooklyn this year.” She smiled, he noticed. “I have a stack of those cards. They've said the same thing for years and years.”

“Lost Island,” she said.

He hesitated to correct her.

“Sorry. Little Lost Island,” she said. “The people from last year . . .” Robert could tell she was tentative. “They didn't want to go back?”

Everyone always wanted to go back to Hopewell. But so far, Robert had had new tenants every summer. Hopeless, deluded, stupid romantic that he was, he was waiting for the one tenant who'd come back from Maine in love with him; one with whom he would want to live there all his life. He was pretty sure he'd found her right now.

“Um, Mr. SanSouci?”

“Robert, please,” he said. He was happy she was so formal. It was a rarity. “I like to share Hopewell with anyone who needs it.”

Rose Arbuthnot's cheeks flushed the palest pink.

“It's not that easy to get to,” he continued. “You can fly to Bangor and rent a car. Or you can drive up I-95 to Route One and down 286 after you pass through Ellsworth. Then it's a pretty twisty route to the landing. Don't follow GPS or you'll find yourself on Lost Road in Dorset. We leave a boat at the dock for our guests.”

“It's kind of you to call us guests,” said Rose, “when we're renting. I hope you'll write this all down.”

“I will,” said Robert. “And
guests
is a nicer word than
renters
.” Rose smiled as she sipped her cappuccino. She had a subdued smile, which he approved of. “The motor can be a little balky,” he said, “but the Whaler should get you over to the island just fine. It finds its own way by now.” He gave a little laugh to reassure her. “Or you can take the ferry across if you get there by six.”

“Is that how we get the car across?”

“No cars on the island,” Robert said, “just the island manager's truck and the new mower.” He was delighted that she looked pleased and not put out.

“So it's ours?” said Rose. “The cottage is ours?”

“It's yours,” Robert told her. “And your friend's.”

She shook her head as if she were remembering something. “Lottie was wondering if it could be a two-week stay.”

He wavered for a moment. A month was the rule and the price was the price. He hated to ask so much for the place, but it was the only way he could afford it, now that Cousin Joan's money had run out. One August rental every year or two meant Robert could keep his rent-stabilized place on East Seventeenth Street, pursue his ill-advised early-music career (not much call for lutenists, but as a guitar player he eked out a living), and pay the expenses on the cottage. It was pretty much a money pit, truth be told. Plus he could visit Hopewell once a year, in July, and know that he'd make enough to hang on to it for a while. If he hadn't had a wedding to play over the holiday weekend, he'd be there now.

What if Rose, despite the fact that she looked like she'd walked out of an Andrew Wyeth painting, was not right for the place? “If you think it's not a good fit I can—”

She put up her hand stopped him mid-sentence. He'd touched a nerve. He hoped he hadn't put her off entirely. “No, we'll take it. I'll write you a check this minute.” She looked in her leather backpack and took out her checkbook. Robert was surprised she'd brought a checkbook with her.

“We could do a third right now and the rest at the end of the month or even during August,” he said.

When she tore off the check, she handed it to him with a flourish. “There,” she said. “It's ours. We're the right fit.”

It was only after she had gone and Robert was back home and getting ready to practice the Dowland galliard that he saw that the check was for the entire amount.

And while he was thrilled—he could pay his rent for another year, maybe even put a down payment on a theorbo—he was not completely surprised. Robert mused on Rose's clear pale eyes as he took down his most treasured lute. He cradled it in his arms and picked out an arpeggiated chord. “Hopewell Cottage works in mysterious ways,” he whispered, “its wonders to perform.”

“W
e only came up with two choices?” asked Rose. “One each?”

Rose's big gesture at the City Bakery had practically wiped out the checking account in her name. She wanted to use her own money for this but her own money did not go very far. They had decided to find two more desperate women, which would mean a quarter of the rent apiece, which would mean they could all afford to go. (Lottie had a stock certificate and Rose had told her about brokers.) They both agreed they needed to abide by the Rule of Robert's Sign. Hopewell Cottage: if you need to go there, they have to take you in.

“I know,” said Lottie. Now she was ordering double lattes. She had been checking her stock value every day and it was up another four cents that morning. “Maybe we should wait another week. We should have had a ton of people to choose from.”

“One of them can't even be for real,” Rose said. “Caroline Dester would not be likely to answer an ad she found in a gym. Even if it was in Tribeca.”

Rose had put up her sign in the juice bar of an Equinox on Duane Street. She had gone into Manhattan to pick up a book on early childhood and decoding issues, which they were holding for her at a new kids' bookstore. She'd passed by the place as the record June rain pelted against the steamy windows. Equinox didn't even have a bulletin board, of course, so she put the card on a table in the juice bar and left. All those overarticulated worked-out bodies: she didn't belong there anymore.

Lottie's voice brought her out of her reverie. “Why did you put the sign there, though? I'm just curious.”

“The women at Equinox—they all looked so gaunt,” said Rose. She remembered them through the steaming, streaming windows. “One of them might need a little lost island.”

“Mine flew out of my hands.”

“What flew out of your hands?”

“My sign. The note card about the cottage. It flew out of my hands so I didn't really obey the Rule of Robert's Sign.”

“That's how you got this Beverly Fisher? I thought you put it up in the Garamond Club.”

“I was going to put it in the Park Slope Coop, because everybody argues about everything there. But it sort of flew out of my hands on my way to a job interview—which got canceled, thank God, because if I'd gotten it I would have had to take it and then I'd have to cancel Hopewell”—she actually shuddered—“and someone picked it up and e-mailed me. Beverly Fisher, the Garamond Club.”

They Googled her. Not much there—some Beverly Fishers on Facebook but none of them seemed likely.

“Someone my husband knows is a Garamond,” said Rose. She didn't want to tell Lottie it was someone from the MacArthur genius club. “Let me text her.”

The answer came almost at once.

BF—yes, for 30 years was unofficially Mrs. Samuel Gorsch tho very hush. Recently inherited all of Gorsch's royalties so is now loaded but you'd never know. Harmless, knows everyone on Bway. could be a fun dinner companion. Why?

Rose sent a quick reply. “Beverly could be a brilliant addition,” she said.

“Beverly could be a grouchy old lady,” said Lottie.

“She sounds mysterious,” said Rose. “And with Caroline Dester, we'll have quite the interesting household.”

“I don't believe this is the real Caroline Dester, though,” said Lottie. “I mean I guess she could live in Tribeca but why would she work out at a gym where people could see her?”

“Her phone number is on the text.” They both looked at Rose's phone. The number could have been from anywhere. Even Hollywood.

“She says to call her,” Lottie said.

Rose tapped in the number. It seemed awfully presumptuous, calling Caroline Dester. She was the American Dream—a leggy beauty from an old New York family and now one of those young Hollywood faces you saw everywhere. “I thought she went to ground after the Oscars,” said Rose. It had to be a different Caroline Dester. “It's ringing.” They put it on speaker.

Even tinnily amplified by Rose's out-of-date cell phone, there was that throaty, thrilling voice, which they both recognized with the first hello.

“Oh, hello, is that Caroline Dester?” said Rose, more tentatively than she'd wanted to. “This is Rose Arbuthnot.” Before Caroline could hang up Rose added, “You answered our little ad.” Why the diminutive?

“Oh, Hopewell Cottage,” said the tremulous voice. “Yes. I'd like to go there.”

Rose couldn't even recall, afterward, exactly what they had said after that. Caroline Dester needed to go to Little Lost Island and they couldn't say no to Caroline Dester.

“She's going to ruin it for us,” said Rose once she'd hung up. She could see it—the island overrun by paparazzi, their pictures on some celebrity website. “We're going up there to get away.”

“I don't think she will,” said Lottie. “Ruin it, that is. She wants to get away as much as we do. Everyone wants a piece of Caroline Dester,” she added. “Except us.”

 • • • 

It was true that everyone wanted a piece of Caroline Dester. They had since she was very little. She was the Graff jewelry baby in their first, and most famous, conflict-free diamond ad. When as a child she starred in a forgettable remake of
National Velvet
, A. O. Scott called her “almost as beautiful as Elizabeth Taylor.” She had a couple of relatively awkward years, during which she was sent to St. Andrew's in Delaware to make friends with her rich-kid kind and score high enough on her SATs to be admitted to Brown. She lasted there a year and a half, after which she starred in a film by Richard Linklater that turned into his biggest commercial success, grossing $408 million in the U.S. alone.

That was the first Oscar she didn't win.

“I hope they are not gawpers,” Caroline said to herself as she looked in the mirror before the arrival of her two visitors. She had the kind of face that looks good in every light, from every angle. Her graceful hand brushed a cascade of naturally highlighted hair away from her turquoise eyes. I hate my nail beds, she thought.

There was not a camera invented that could produce an unflattering picture of Caroline Dester. Her skin practically sparkled, as Jean Harlow's was said to have done. Her body was lithe and obedient from years of personal training and just great genes. She'd had no work done and she was already twenty-seven. She was at the top of her game, until this past February.

The first time they'd run her through the traps of an Oscar campaign it was exciting and a lark. She wasn't supposed to win and she didn't. But this time, she was the front-runner. She'd wanted it very much. She killed it on the circuit: she'd picked up the SAG
and
the Golden Globe. And then she lost it on the night. She had played the humiliation over and over on YouTube, contributing to the four million hits it received within two days. “And the Oscar goes to . . .” The elderly, out-of-it has-been who couldn't or wouldn't read the name after he'd fumbled open the envelope. Julianne Moore charmingly running up to give him reading glasses. The has-been squinting at the card with that grin on his face, looking up at the camera and saying, “Caroline?”

Her stomach lurched again thinking of it now. On the night, she got out of her seat and remembered to lift up her hem so she wouldn't trip. “No, it's Charlize! Sorry, darlin'! The Oscar goes to Charlize . . .” She was still hugging everybody until her producer told her to stop. Her face twisted into a grimace and then the tears just would not stop coming. She couldn't get herself back. She leaked tears all through Charlize's gracious actressy speech. It was great television and #crybabycaroline became a meme within a nanosecond. A few people felt bad for her; most ripped her to shreds. Now she was Sally Field in reverse. At least Sally took home the statuette.

She would have put a paper bag over her head, but that was unoriginal and would have gotten her even more press. Instead she holed up in her mother's house and she decided to quit. By the end of June, she started asking the universe for a sign. Then she found one, literally, on a table at the juice bar she'd ducked into because she'd been caught in the rain. She would go to this place in Maine as a regular person. It would be her first regular-person act—no,
action
—since she was a baby. It was exhausting to be who she was.

 • • • 

Lottie was the one who got in touch with Beverly Fisher about whether she'd really be coming to Little Lost Island. Apparently Beverly Fisher did not believe in the telephone, because she never answered texts or calls and she didn't have voice mail. Lottie e-mailed her a couple of times before she got an answer:

Dear Ms. Wilkes,

I will be out of town till end July, after which time I will join you in Maine. I have reviewed the accommodations and they appear to be satisfactory, though I am not able to tell much about the blueberries and so forth, as I am color-blind.

My desire is not to be disturbed and to have one month of absolute rest. You need feel no need to entertain me. I have had enough entertainment for two lifetimes.

With some difficulty I have managed to wire the necessary money to the account you gave me. I will look forward to seeing you there, though only in small doses.

Yours,

Beverly Fisher

Beverly had indeed sent a wire transfer to Rose's account, which bought Lottie a little more time. (She hadn't managed to part with her stock just yet.) Rose apparently felt that inspired confidence. Lottie liked the line about having had enough entertainment for two lifetimes, so Beverly was their fourth. The last lost soul of Little Lost Island.