Enchanted August (25 page)

Lottie emerged from the bathroom and spotted the two phones on the kitchen table. “I guess Rose didn't take them into the Harbor?”

“No, but I think you'll find your messages have downloaded,” said Robert.

She checked her phone. “They have! How did that happen?”

“If I told you, I'd have to kill you.”

“Seriously?”

“No, there's a hot spot on the third floor.” Everybody might as well know now.

“Are you okay in there, Ethan?” asked Lottie.

“I'm okay!” Ethan called.

“Turn off the water when it gets too full.”

“Don't come in!”

“Robert, you didn't tell Jon if you think he should quit his job,” said Lottie.

“I'm hardly qualified—”

“Just go with your gut,” Lottie said. “We need an objective opinion.”

Robert thought about it. “Would you have enough to live on? While you get started?”

“I guess I'd ask Beverly for a retainer and we'd live on that. We're already fucked in terms of finances anyway. Preschool costs the earth.”

“Does it?” asked Robert. He would have to learn about children now.

“I am totally going to do it,” Jon said. “Leap and the net will appear.”

Lottie's face lit up. “Oh, Jon, I am so proud of you.” They really were a pretty tight couple. This, Robert thought, is love.

Jon said, “Fuck 'em. They owe me a shitload of vacation pay. I haven't taken a break since I got there.”

“Except for this pneumonia,” said Lottie, “which has gone on a long time.” She handed him the phone and he typed furiously.

“I'm still not on the network, so I'm reduced to sending from my Gmail,” Jon said. “I don't even know who my boss is right now; there's been so much turnover.”

Robert was impressed with Jon's determination. He had never quit a nine-to-five job because he had never had one. He always pictured the workplace as something between a neighborhood bar and a penal colony.

“And . . . Send.” Jon pushed the button with a flourish. Lottie gave him an enormous hug. Then he collapsed onto a chair. “Oh, Christ, Lottie, what have I done?”

She plopped herself in his lap. “I think you've done the right thing, Jon. I really do. And it won't actually send till you're in cell phone range, if you want to change your mind.”

“No, I quit,” said Jon. “Let's take it up to Robert's hot spot and really send it, Lottie.” He looked down at the phone. “I should listen to these voice mails, though,” he said. “There are four messages from some new number. It could be my mom about my stepdad. Maybe they're at the hospital?”

Jon pressed the voice mail button. “Oh,” he said to Lottie. “It's my new boss.”

“Justin?” she asked.

“Carla,” he said.

Lottie's face went pale.

Jon kept listening, his face intent. “Christ.”

Lottie held her breath. “Are you going back there?” she asked.

“Nope.” He swiped the message away. “She fired me.”

“Lucky you quit then,” said Robert.

 • • • 

Rose found herself running. She couldn't stop running.

“You
shit
! You
asshole
!” She screamed into the rain. “
I hate you!
” Her throat was raw. She wanted to kill herself. She would have thrown the phone onto the rocks and smashed it into shards if she hadn't had to keep it to confront him.

“You made me such a fucking
fool.
What a fucking
dupe
I am!”

She retched. The rain ran down her back and into her bones.

She didn't know where she was going. She wanted to be home with the twins and away from this awful place. But home meant Fred. And this place meant Fred. Could she just lie down on the wet grass and let the rain wash her away?

She kept walking, sliding on the grass and stumbling on the rocks. The boardwalk was treacherous. The paths were drenched in rain and filled with mud. She didn't know how far she had gone or where she was going when she realized she was standing at the back of the library. Where Fred was
writing
. So smug in the knowledge that she, his stupid duped Rose, loved him no matter what. Her breath came in heaves.

She walked in through the screen door and slammed it shut.

Fred was the only one there, computer on, earbuds in. He didn't even look up.

Rose walked over to him and slapped his computer off the table. “You
shit
!”

He looked up. “Jesus, Rose! What the fuck?” Then he could see that her whole body was trembling.

She pummeled his chest. “Did you sleep with her?”

“What are you talking about?”

“
Did you sleep with her?
”

He backed away. “No, I didn't sleep with her.”

“So you know what I'm talking about! You didn't sleep with her?”

“I told you, no.”

“Do
not
lie to me!”

“I'm not lying to you.” He took her by the arm.

“Don't
touch
me!”

“I didn't sleep with her. I didn't even know her! It was just texting, Rose.”

“You quoted
Rimbaud
to her! The same
lines
, Fred!”

“I don't know much French.”

She pounded on his shoulders again. “Are you sleeping with her now? Because you know she's putting out for Robert SanSouci, too.”

“Rose, don't be horrible.”

“Don't
me
be horrible? After this?” She dug furiously in her pocket and threw his cell phone on the table.

“
You
moved out! You left me and came up here.”

“On
vacation
! Don't you
dare
blame your infidelity on me.”

“Rose!” He stood up suddenly. His chair fell behind him. He picked it up and for a moment she thought he might haul it across the room. “It was not infidelity. It didn't happen. And it wasn't real.”

“I don't want to be on this island with you. I don't want to be anywhere with you.”

“You think this is enough to break us up.”

He said it like it was a statement. She wanted to say yes I do. She shook her head and said, “I don't know.”

He took an enormous breath and let it out very slowly. “Okay. Great. But I don't want to give up on us, Rose. I love you. It's just not more complicated than that. I love you, Rosie, and I want to be with you. I do.”

If he says that one more time I'll believe him and I don't want to believe him.

She put her head down on the long polished table and closed her eyes. “Just go, Fred. Please just go.”

 • • • 

The next morning, Fred was gone. Caroline was hanging on by a thread—she had moved into the turret room and hardly came out. Lottie and Jon's little boy was no longer sleeping through the night. The cottage was a wreck and so was Beverly.

He woke on Sunday morning with a headache. No one would remember that they had promised to take care of Possum that afternoon. He was sure of it.

Beverly regarded the box of cremains. He didn't want to be carrying around this box anymore. He made himself coffee and went out to his private porch. Lottie was already there.

“At least
we're
not fighting, Beverly,” she said. She looked at what he had in his arms. “There's dear Possum.”

“What was Possum, yes.”

“I thought we would all be together for Possum's service in the woods, but even I don't see that now.” She looked down at Beverly's box. “I don't suppose you want to be carrying around that box anymore. It's not very nice for Possum to be in there, always portable. He needs a final resting place.”

“Gorsch needs one too.” This was a risk, telling her this. What would she think of him now? A selfish old queen who could only hold on to the remains of his cat, and not of his own life partner?

Lottie did not seem shocked. “He doesn't have one?”

“I didn't know what was happening. People just told me what to do when Gorsch—when he stopped living. I couldn't go into the place where they do the cremation. I couldn't. And then it's days before you get these things, the ashes, for a
human being
. Can you imagine such barbarity? Gorsch refused to be buried. He didn't want me traipsing out to Queens to lay grocery-store flowers on his grave. He said he would have been buried in our back garden in the country place but apparently they don't let you plant bodies in the ground anymore, unless it's a bona fide cemetery. So I gave them away.”

He wasn't making a whole lot of sense, even to himself, but Lottie didn't comment. She just drank her coffee. If she so much as glanced at him he would stop talking. She didn't.

“I gave away Gorsch's ashes.” Poor good, strong, brilliant, funny Sam Gorsch. In a box. “I didn't know what to do. I couldn't have it in the house or near me. I couldn't touch the ashes. There are bones!” Lottie nodded. She's letting me get it all out. I don't have to say anything more. He went on. “So I called his agent. Imagine. I called his agent and said, here, you take care of them. His niece and nephews asked me, what did you do with Sam's ashes, and I was too ashamed to tell them. How ridiculous would that sound? I said I had spread some of them in front of the Brill Building at dawn and the rest on Fire Island at sunset. What a lie! They're at ICM. In an urn in a conference room. Or a filing cabinet!”

Beverly couldn't stop the tears that were leaking from his eyes. He had let Sam down so terribly. But Sam would understand. Sam was the strong one. Sam let him get away with everything. Why had Sam had to go first?

“I don't think he much minds where his ashes are,” said Lottie.

“He would mind that Possum was still in a box,” said Beverly. His voice was suddenly ferocious. He couldn't help himself. “That's not how we treated Possum!”

“We'll be good to Possum.”

“Possum would have liked it here too. So many
birds
.”

“It really is a little bit of heaven,” she said. “Even if no one else shows up, you and I will take care of Possum, and Jon will help you with your darling Gorsch. Would that work?”

Beverly could only nod.

“Jon is good at that sort of thing. He'll get the box back for you without a fuss.”

“I'm a useless old man.”

“You're certainly not useless and you're far from old. You just need help with all that paperwork. When we get back to the city we'll get it all straightened out.”

Beverly didn't like to think about going back to the city. “Everything will change once we're back.”

Lottie sighed. “Everything has already changed, after the blue moon. I did think we'd be forever friends. I almost still do. It may take some years to get us back on track, but it will start with you and me and Jon and your sweet Gorsch.”

“He wasn't that sweet. He was like acid when he wanted to be. That's why . . .”

“I imagine that's why you cared for him so very much,” said Lottie.

“I loved him.” There, he'd said it. “I was his special love.”

He picked up the box of Possum's ashes and found himself stroking the top of it. “Possum would like it here. In the shade, though. Not in the sun. And not on the beach.”

“Robert told me the spot he thought would be nice for Possum. And maybe Rose has written a poem.”

“I doubt it,” said Beverly. “I've barely seen Rose these past several days. She's driven Caroline into seclusion.” He knew it wasn't fair as he said it, but the cottage was so empty without Caroline's presence and he had to blame someone. He turned his attention back to the box. “I put a note on the kitchen table to remind them to meet us at Cathedral Woods at three. I even drew them a map.”

Jon came up the stairs to Beverly's little porch. “May I join you?”

“Of course,” said Beverly. His mind flashed back to Lottie at the beginning of their month there. She'd said he would want them with him in his private rooms. And now he did.

“Are you thinking back to the old days? When you took this turret before any of us came up?”

“I'd do it again in a heartbeat,” said Beverly.

“This will be your room whenever you come up,” said Lottie. “I see it.”

“Lottie and her visions,” Jon said. “The amazing thing is that they pretty much come true.”

“I don't see it,” said Beverly. “Robert SanSouci is a nice enough young man, but he won't have me staying here every summer, I can tell you that.”

“Caroline adores you, and that's enough,” said Lottie.

“Oh, Lottie,” Jon said, “even you can't think that this Caroline-Robert moment is going to survive the week. She's not even speaking to him. I can't figure out why she hasn't gone home.”

“She still has some clothes in the wash,” said Lottie. “And anwyay, I think she's already fallen in love with Robert.”

“Even if she takes him back she'll crush his heart,” said Jon.

“She won't! Robert wants someone who needs the cottage. Caroline needs Robert to worship her.”

“Caroline has millions of people worshipping her.”

“But she needs
one
person. To worship
her
.”

“It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me,” said Beverly, “but no harm in letting you entertain yourself with the idea. I don't think anyone else is going to appear for Possum's great event this afternoon. You two will have to do.”

 • • • 

Robert sat morosely cradling his lute on the horsehair settee on his beloved third floor. But his beloved third floor was no longer beloved. He had been betrayed.

Caroline and Fred Arbuthnot! It was so disgusting. Even if she'd thought Fred Arbuthnot was Mike McGowan and he wasn't married to Rose. And even though she was texting him before she'd
met
Robert.