Missing Marlene (16 page)

When Daniel arrived at Eleanor’s that evening, Laura was already seated at a table in the restaurant’s small back room that overlooked the mill wheel and millpond. By now it was completely dark outside, and the immense picture window loomed like a smoky mirror.

Laura had obviously stopped at home after work to change for dinner. She wore a cowled wool dress the same pale gray of her eyes. Her fair hair fell loose about her shoulders. She looked very beautiful.

She rose and kissed him as he reached the table.

“Why so glum?” she asked. “We’re supposed to be celebrating.”

“Celebrating what?” he said, sitting.

“Your exciting new opportunity.
Well?
How did it go?”

He shrugged, fiddling with his silverware.

She frowned. “What’s the matter with you? You seem depressed.”

He looked her in the eyes. “I am. I don’t like lying, especially to Jane. We’ve always had an open, honest relationship.”

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “What do you want to do? Tell her you’re going after a new job?”

“I’m not ‘going after a new job,’ and if I were—yes, I would tell her. I
should
have told her I was going to see Beryl.”

“Ooh, so it’s ‘Beryl,’ is it? What’s she like?”

“I hated her. She’s a cold, manipulative monster. She said some awful things about Jane, things that aren’t true.”

“Really? Like what?”

“It doesn’t matter what. It’s all lies anyway.”

“Where did she get these lies?”

“Roger.”

“Roger?” She looked baffled. “Roger Haines?”

He nodded.

“How does she know him?”

“He’s signed with her.”

“Beryl Patrice took
Roger?”

“Yes, and believed everything the lizard told her to place all the blame for his dying career on Jane.”

“That’s terrible! How could he do such a thing?”

“Easy. He’s Roger.”

Laura pondered this for a moment. “What does Beryl look like?”

“What a strange question. What does it matter?”

“I’m curious, that’s all.”

“An attractive older woman, well groomed, beautiful once.”

“And ...” Laura prompted. “Did she offer you a job?”

He nodded reluctantly.

She squealed and reached across the table to squeeze his hands. “What? What? Tell me, tell me.”

“I don’t want it, Laura. It’s not me. She’s got some notion I’ll be the African-American agent. African-American is very hot right now, you know,” he informed her with a wry smile.

“You’ve always been pretty hot,” she said, and when he didn’t smile she grew serious. “So? What’s wrong with that? I’m sure you’ll be free to handle other books, too.”

“Laura, I’m not ready to just sit myself down and be an agent yet. I’ve only sold
one book.
I have more to learn. I don’t think I would like it there, anyway.”

“How can you possibly know that? Did you meet anyone else? Henry Silver?”

“No.”

“Then you can’t possibly know if you’d like it there!”

“Meeting Beryl was enough. She’s a barracuda.”

Laura’s face was sullen as she sipped her water. A waiter appeared, and she ordered a glass of white wine. Daniel asked for Perrier.

“It’s natural to be afraid of change,” Laura said, choosing her words carefully. “But you can’t let your affection for Jane stop you from taking risks, from rising in your career. I’m doing okay at Unimed, but at the rate we’re going we’ll never have enough money for a down payment on a house.”

“I can rise in my career with Jane, the same way Jane rose in her career with Kenneth.”

“That was different,” Laura said. “Jane built up her clientele while she was still with Silver and Payne. She had the agency name as a draw. What do you have?”

“Jane’s agency is highly respected,” he said defensively. “All kinds of writers approach us. We just have to be more aggressive. Jane’s thinking of going to some writers’ conferences to get her name out there.”

“All that takes so much time. And who knows if it will even work?” Her shoulders slumped.

“And if it doesn’t work? What have we lost?”

“I’ve told you—time and money.”

“What about happiness? What about fulfillment?” He shook his head. “I got bad vibrations from that place.”

“What kind of vibrations did you get about money?”

He looked at her frankly. “The money would be very good.” He sounded almost sorry.

“How good?” Laura asked, and sipped her water.

“A draw of sixty thousand against commissions.”

She nearly choked, and carefully set down her glass. “Dollars?” she asked in a high, thin voice.

“No, yen. Of course dollars.”

“Oh my . . . Daniel, honey,” she said, her face becoming solemn, “I want you to be happy and fulfilled, but we can’t turn down sixty thousand dollars. It’s three times what you’re making. How can you even
consider
turning it down? If you’d told me that in the first place . . .”

“Nothing else would have mattered?” he asked sardonically. He shook his head. “That’s not true, Laura. At least not for me. If it’s true for you, and I don’t take this job, and that comes between us ... well, I think we have a serious problem.”

“What are you saying?”

The waiter brought their drinks. Daniel kept his gaze lowered to his plate, concentrating on its border of tiny pink roses.

“Would you care to order?” the waiter asked.

“Not yet,” Laura told him, and he went away. “No,” she said to Daniel, “we wouldn’t have a problem. I’m not like that, and you know it. I would never expect you to take a job you hated. I love you. I want you to be happy. But I also know you very well, Daniel. You’re not good with change. It scares you. And your friendship with Jane doesn’t make it any easier.

“I’m not saying you should take a job you’ll hate, just for the money. I’m saying you shouldn’t be so positive you’ll hate it. Give it a chance. Think about it. You only saw her this morning.”

“All right,” he said, looking up with a wan smile. “I’ll think about it.”

“Good.” She opened her menu, started to read, then put it down. “By the way, did you find out how she knew about you?”

“She wouldn’t say, but I’m pretty sure it was Roger.”

“Why would he do that?”

“To get me away from Jane—an extra twist of the knife. And Beryl would take pleasure in it, too. She clearly dislikes Jane. After all, Jane got Kenneth, and Beryl wanted him.”

“From what you’ve told me, it sounds like Beryl wants everybody.”

“Including me.”

Her gaze snapped to him. “Daniel, do you think—?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “She’s in her sixties!”

“So what? You think women shut down at sixty? Think again.”

“Hmmm,” he said, opening his menu. “Maybe you don’t want me to consider this job after all....”

Laura, engrossed in the menu, didn’t respond.

Jane drove carefully down Plunkett Lane, a narrow dirt track that snaked through the thick woods at the south end of town. The car’s headlights pierced the darkness, throwing bare branches into stark relief. A light wind tossed dead leaves against the windshield. The clock in the dashboard said it was ten minutes to seven. Jane would make the meeting, which always began at seven, in plenty of time.

Jane had been a member of the Defarge Club for nine years, since she and Kenneth had moved to Shady Hills. In all that time, the only change in the club’s membership had been due to the death of poor Karen Richardson of breast cancer during Jane’s first year in the club. The club’s meeting time and venue had not changed at all: seven o’clock every other Tuesday night at Hydrangea House, the only inn in Shady Hills.

Plunkett Lane wound deep into these woods, more than two miles, and ended at Hadley Pond. The pond was fed by the Morris River, which had once driven Hadley’s gristmill, now Eleanor’s.

Hydrangea House had once been the home of William Hadley, the mill’s owner. For the past twelve years Louise and Ernie Zabriskie had owned the sprawling Victorian (it was they who had given it its name) and run it as an inn and a setting for weddings, company parties, and the like.

Jane stopped at the white wooden posts that flanked the inn’s driveway, also just a dirt track, and turned in between them. She drove up the long, sloping lawn and parked just to the left of the inn’s wide white wooden steps.

Grabbing her carpetbag from the passenger seat, she got out and took from the trunk the foil-wrapped plate containing Florence’s coconut bread. She gazed up at the inn. Warm golden light glowed at several of the upstairs windows: Louise and Ernie were never without a few guests—people in the area on business, or sightseeing bed-and-breakfast types.

Jane climbed the stairs and crossed the wide porch, full of white wicker chairs and love seats and sofas piled with plump floral-chintz cushions. In the spring and summer, Louise added hanging baskets of flowers overflowing with vivid color, and often the club met on the porch, as lovely and peaceful an experience as Jane had ever had.

Before Jane reached the front door, Louise opened it, smiling in her brisk way. Jane was exceptionally fond of Louise, though this had not always been the case. Louise, the only daughter of an alcoholic mother whom Louise had cared for until her mother died of cancer, had built a wall around herself, a wall meant to keep people from seeing her pain at never having been loved by her parents. As a result she could be brisk and cold and sometimes rude, but one had only to spend some time with Louise to realize that this was not the true woman. In actuality, Louise was a caring, deeply empathetic person, the first to offer help, comfort, or sympathy to a friend in trouble.

She was a tiny woman, no more than five feet, and invariably wore tidy blouses and skirts and, on cold nights such as this, crisp cardigans. She had brown hair that she kept cropped close to her head because she couldn’t be bothered, and fine, birdlike features—a tight little mouth, a sharp nose, and small brown eyes.

“Come in, come in,” she said, graciously accepting Jane’s kiss on the cheek. She took Jane’s coat and hung it in the closet. “How are you, dear?”

“Exhausted.” Jane followed Louise across the foyer and into the living room on the right. A fire roared in the hearth at the back of the room, at the center of which two fat sofas upholstered in a green-and-gold tapestry print faced each other across a large coffee table. Completing the square were two chairs in solid hunter green, one with its back to the fireplace, the other facing it.

“Is something the matter?” Louise asked.

Jane waved in a dismissive gesture. “Same old trouble. Trying to find out what happened to my nanny.”

“Oh yes, I heard. Left, I understand.”

Jane set down the coconut bread on the coffee table, plunked her carpetbag on the sofa on the right, and sat down beside it. “How’d you hear?”

Louise frowned in thought. “I think Ginny told me. But you’ve found a wonderful new woman, she said.”

“Yes, Florence. A treasure. She made that.” Jane indicated the plate.

“Mmm, can’t wait to try it.”

Ernie appeared in the doorway—dear plump Ernie in his snug fisherman’s knit and heavy black-framed glasses. “‘Evening, Jane.”

“How’s it going, Ernie?”

“Not bad, not bad. Can’t stop to talk, though. Gotta get that coffee made, or I’m in trouble.” He winked.

“Oh, please,” Louise scoffed. “The poor overworked slave.” She sat down in the chair that faced the fireplace. “Penny can’t come tonight. Alan’s got the flu and can’t watch the baby.”

“Poor Alan. Everyone else coming?” Jane asked.

Louise nodded, eyes wide. “Even Rhoda. I guess you know.”

“About David. Yes. In fact I saw him in Whipped Cream with
her
today. Gave her a ring, right there in the coffee shop. Made Ginny and me sick.”

“He’s a pig,” Louise said, as if stating an absolute fact. “I warned Rhoda trouble was coming. I must say she’s taking it well. She says she’s not going to be one of those pathetic abandoned middle-aged women. She’s going to get on with her life.”

“That’s right,” Rhoda said from the doorway. She marched in, carrying her flowered carryall, and kissed Jane and Louise hello before falling into her usual spot on the sofa facing Jane, at the end near Louise and the fireplace.

Louise looked uncomfortable. “Sorry, Rhoda.” “Sorry? About what? What you said is exactly right, all of it. David is a pig, and I’m embarrassed I didn’t see it sooner and divorce
him.
As it is, I’m grateful to know sooner than later. Let him have his little piece and see how long she interests him. And then . . .” She shrugged uncaringly.

Jane admired Rhoda’s attitude. Rhoda really would be better off without David, and she was fortunate to see that so clearly. Rhoda was an attractive woman, trim and tallish, with lovely, gently waving variegated blond hair to her shoulders and a handsome face made striking by eyes as blue as a summer sky. Barely over forty, she’d have no trouble attracting a new man if she wanted to.

“So,” Rhoda said, one brow lifting, “he was with her at Whipped Cream?”

Jane nodded. At that moment Ginny appeared in the doorway. Jane breathed a sigh of relief. Let Ginny tell the story. All eyes turned to her.

“What’s going on?” Ginny asked. She sat down next to Jane on the sofa, placing her canvas bag on the floor at her feet.

“We were telling Rhoda about David and Lola today,” Jane said uneasily.

Ginny looked horrified. “You were?” She looked at Rhoda.

“It’s all right.” Rhoda looked unflappable, as if she were waiting for the details of a movie Ginny had just seen. “Really.”

Ginny looked at Jane, who nodded encouragingly.

“Well,” Ginny said, “he put a present on her plate when she wasn’t looking. It was a ring.”

“I know that,” Rhoda said. “What kind of ring?”

“A diamond.”

“Big? Not so big? What?”

“Big.”

“Hah!” Rhoda leaned back against the sofa, as if that settled everything. “The bastard. I’m going to take him for all he’s worth.”

“Attagirl,” Ginny said.

“Room for one more?” came a deep, brisk voice from the doorway. Doris, thin and stooped, was already making her way slowly into the room. When she reached the chair facing Louise’s—Doris’s special chair—she looked around at the other women, and her dark eyes sparkled in her wrinkled face. “What are we dishing up tonight?”

“My divorce,” Rhoda said.

Doris fell into her chair. “Divorce! Rhoda Kagan, what the blazes are you talking about?”

“David wants a divorce. He’s marrying his hygienist.”

“Good. Let him drill her for a while. Never liked him. Now I can change dentists.”

“You never told me you didn’t like him,” Rhoda said, leaning forward a little.

“Why would I have told you? You were married to him. Now I can tell you.”

“Why don’t you like him?”

“Because every time I went for an appointment I saw how he looked at those pretty young girls at his office and I thought, ‘Look all you like, mister, but if you’re smart, you’ll appreciate what you’ve got in Rhoda.’”

“Why, that’s awfully sweet, Doris,” Rhoda said.

Doris ignored her remark. She hoisted her huge macramé bag onto her lap and started fishing around in it. “Now you can find someone good enough for you,” she muttered. “Where’s Penny?”

“Watching Rebecca. Alan’s got the flu,” Louise said.

Doris nodded. “So we’re all here, then.”

“Yes,” Louise said. “Ladies . . .”

With synchronicity so perfect it might have been choreographed, the five women opened their bags and drew out their knitting, busying themselves with orienting needles and arranging balls of yarn.

Jane’s mother had taught her to knit when she was eight years old. She had knitted through high school, forsaken it through college and into her career and marriage, and taken it up again when she’d moved to Shady Hills and learned of the Defarge Club from Ginny, who had herself just joined.

Knitting was the most relaxing activity Jane engaged in, despite the fact that she was the fastest knitter in the club, her needles flying so fast they were nearly a blur. She seldom missed meetings, treasuring their therapeutic benefits and treasuring even more the friends she had made. Here, she and the other women were safe to be themselves, to speak their minds, to admit to weaknesses, without ever being judged. For this reason, the Defarge Club was extremely selective about the people it allowed in: One bad choice could spoil the whole atmosphere.

Jane turned to Ginny, beside her on the sofa. Ginny had been working for the longest time on a sweater for Rob, a complicated ribbed two-color design the others had warned her against as being too advanced for her. But Ginny had insisted, eager to improve her skills, and as a result often needed help from the other, more advanced knitters.

“What is it you’re having trouble with?” Jane asked her.

“It’s this color change.” Ginny held up a place in the sweater where a maroon stripe met a navy one. “I’ve got holes.”

“That’s easy,” Jane said. “You’re not twisting.”

“Twisting?”

“You’ve got to bring your new color up
under
your old color so that the strands twist. That holds the colors together. Otherwise you get”—Jane picked up the area in question—“holes. You’ll have to rip out all these rows.”

“Oh, pooh,” Ginny said, though good-naturedly.

Jane herself was making a sweater for Nick out of green-and-blue hand-dyed wool she’d bought at the Yarn Basket, the needlework shop on the green. Several times in the past the store’s owner, Dara Nielsen, had made disparaging remarks about the Defarge Club to Jane—proving, in Jane’s opinion, that Dara was jealous of any needlework event in Shady Hills that was not of her instigation. For this reason, none of the club’s other members would buy from Dara, choosing instead to travel to Morristown or even New York City for their yarn. But Jane took a perverse pleasure in buying from Dara and making her jealous. Besides, Jane didn’t have time to drive to Morristown for yarn, and when she was in New York she barely had time for her business appointments and lunches.

“That yarn is exquisite,” Rhoda said to Jane.

“Thanks,” Jane said. “Also very expensive.”

“Cheaper in New York,” Doris said, not for the first time. She was barely visible in her chair, enveloped by the fleecy white afghan she had nearly finished for her new granddaughter.

“Doris,” Rhoda said gently, “wouldn’t it be easier for you to buy from Dara, or at least in Morristown?”

“Why, because I’m old?”

“Well, no, it’s just—well—”

“Get rid of ideas like that, Rhoda, especially if you want to start again in the man department. Being old doesn’t stop me from much, believe me. Not much at all.”

While the other women pondered this last remark, Ernie appeared with the coffee. He set down the tray on the table next to the coconut bread.

“Whatever’s under there sure smells good,” he said, eyeing the foil-covered plate.

“Have a slice, Ernie,” Jane said. “You can even sit with us.”

The others giggled.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Ernie said.

“Wouldn’t dream of what,” Doris said, “having a slice, or sitting with us?”

“Either,” Ernie said with a laugh.

“Don’t worry about him,” Louise said. “He’ll eat some later, in private, when no one’s looking. It’s his favorite way to eat.”

Ernie, looking stricken, left the room.

“That was a bit harsh, Louise,” Jane said.

“I’m angry at him,” Louise said. “The doctor says he wouldn’t have high blood pressure and this sugar problem if he’d lose weight, but he refuses to even try.”

“Sarcasm won’t make him do it,” Doris said.

Jane looked at Louise. Her face had turned quite red, and her mouth was working silently, as if she couldn’t decide how to respond.

“Well!” Ginny broke in cheerfully. “I think it’s time to unveil Jane’s offering. Your new nanny made this, right, Jane? Florence?”

“Right,” Jane said, unwrapping the plate. Slices of the creamy white loaf overlapped each other from one side of the plate to the other.

Jane poured cups of coffee and passed them with plates of cake and forks and napkins.

“Goodness!” Doris exclaimed. “This girl is a keeper, Jane. Damn sight better than that slut you had before.”

Everyone stopped and looked at her.

“Doris ...” Rhoda reproached her.

“No,” Jane said, looking at Doris with new interest, “it’s all right, Rhoda. Doris, did you know anything about Marlene?”

Doris put down her plate. “Not Marlene, no. But that boy she was dating, Gilbert Dapero—I taught him.” Doris had taught at Shady Hills High School for forty-five years until her retirement five years earlier at the age of sixty-seven.