The Divide (15 page)

“What was that about?” Will said.

“No idea. I think she got stung or something . . .”

Ryan’s eyes flicked languidly to Josh’s crotch then back to his eyes, a slow grin sliding in.

“Yeah, right,” he said. “I wonder what by.”

 

 

 

Ben swung the last of the bags into the back of the rented truck and shut the tailgate. They had an earlier flight to catch than all the others who were checking out that morning and everyone had trooped down across the lawn to the parking area behind the stables to see them off. The ritual fond farewells were in full swing. Abbie and Katie and Lane, all close to tears, were hugging and kissing and making one another promise to call and e-mail. Their brothers were doing the more reserved and awkward male version of the same thing, calling each other
bro
and
man
and
dude
and sharing elaborate handshakes and slaps on the back.

Their mothers meanwhile were again going through that other annual ritual of promising to visit with one another. Ben heard Sarah say that this year they would
definitely
be visiting the Delroys in Florida. Maybe they could all escape the grandparents and meet up for Thanksgiving? And go skiing somewhere in February? None of this, of course, would ever happen and they all secretly knew it. The mutual pretense simply made everybody feel better about parting.

It was a ritual in which, for reasons Ben didn’t fully understand, the men never seemed to take part. Perhaps they were just too cynical. Instead, he and Tom Bradstock and Delroy were standing by the truck, looking on indulgently and discussing more manly and important matters, like check-in security procedure and how many air miles they had each clocked up. Tom had now started telling them about a sniffer dog that had taken a shine to him at Chicago O’Hare and headed straight for him every time he stepped into the baggage hall.

“I try to explain to the handlers that we’re just good friends, but they don’t believe me and haul me off to the booth for another search.”

Ben listened just enough to be able to laugh in the right places. He was watching Josh and again feeling sorry for him. The boy had missed dinner the previous evening, claiming he wasn’t feeling well. He hadn’t even shown up for the usual end-of-vacation party in the bar afterward. All his earlier joy seemed to have ebbed away. Sarah said something had obviously gone wrong between him and Katie. And looking at the two of them now, studiously avoiding each other, Ben figured she must be right. On top of that, Abbie had been in tears before breakfast, having just said good-bye to Ty. Men and women, Ben sighed to himself. Lord help us all.

Then he saw Eve. He had looked out for her at breakfast, but she hadn’t shown up and he had resigned himself to leaving without saying good-bye. It was probably better that way. But here she was, beautiful as ever in her riding clothes, walking down across the lawn. The morning ride was about to leave, the horses all saddled up in line outside the stables, some of the guests already mounting up. And for a moment Ben thought that was where she must be going. But then she gave a little wave and headed down toward the parking area. She looked at him and they exchanged a smile but she went to join the women.

Tom Bradstock had finished his story and had gone across to talk with one of the riders. Delroy was staring at Eve.

“What I’d give to be Adam,” he said quietly.

It took Ben a couple of beats to understand what he meant.

“Oh, right. Yeah. She’s nice.”

“
Nice?
Ben, you are so . . . measured. I can think of a dozen things I’d call her before
nice
.”

Two nights earlier, Ben had plucked up the courage to accompany Delroy on his nightly stroll into the woods. Whether pot was stronger nowadays or it had simply been too long since he last tried it, Ben didn’t know, but after just a few puffs his head started telescoping into itself, and he staggered in a clammy nausea back to his cabin and lay on the bed for what seemed like hours, convinced he was going to die. The humiliation was galling enough, but worse still was Delroy’s apparent assumption that they had graduated to more intimate terms.
Measured?
How the hell would he know? They didn’t even know each other. Ben looked at his watch.

“Well,” he said. “I think it’s time we were going.”

As he walked over toward the women he heard Sarah ask Eve if she ever came to New York.

“As a matter of fact, I’m coming in September, for a friend’s exhibition.”

“Hey, well, we should get together,” Sarah said.

“I’d like that.”

“Maybe we could go see a show. Do you like musicals?”

“Love them.”

While they swapped numbers, Ben rounded up the kids and everyone said their final good-byes. When Eve touched her cool cheek against his, he felt a twist of melancholy in his chest. She said how much she had enjoyed meeting them all. Not him, he noted,
them all.
Lori was still in bed, she said, but had asked her to say good-bye. The Coopers climbed into the truck and Ben turned the key.

“You make sure to call us,” Sarah said to Eve.

“I promise.”

She never would, of course. As they pulled away down the drive, the kids calling and leaning out of their windows to wave, Ben lifted his eyes to the mirror and took what he was sure would be his last look at her.

I
t was match point and, as usual, Sarah’s father was going to win. Nobody would be surprised. Even the lizards sunbathing along the court’s perimeter looked on with a kind of weary fatalism. However, that George Davenport could still, at the age of sixty-eight, annihilate his son-in-law in two straight sets clearly gave him more pleasure than he could disguise. In his trim white shorts and polo shirt, his silver hair sleek and only the faintest glisten of sweat on his tanned brow, he bounced the ball and prepared to serve. At the other end, in his sodden gray T-shirt and floral boardshorts that he wore in childish defiance of Westchester court etiquette, Benjamin stood braced like a prisoner before a firing squad.

It was the Sunday of Labor Day weekend and the Coopers had driven that morning in sunlit gloom from Syosset to Bedford for the ritual lunch with Sarah’s parents. Quite how the custom had endured all these years, when everyone involved—with the possible exception of Sarah’s mother—so dreaded it, was a mystery almost as profound as her father’s insatiable joy at beating, for the umpteenth time, so lackluster an opponent. Perhaps simply to prolong Benjamin’s misery, he now served his first double fault of the match.

“Forty-fifteen!”

Lunch was waiting on the terrace that spread grandly from the south-facing side of the house and, sensing what passed for a climax to the match, Sarah, her mother, Abbie, and Josh had wandered down across the manicured grass, bearing lemonade and a dogged, if somewhat strained, cheeriness. The court, like all else material at the Davenport residence, was immaculate. Groomed twice weekly by one of several gardeners, its brick and gravel surround planted with rose and hibiscus and sculpted cushions of lavender, it was surfaced with the very latest sort of synthetic grass which played, according to Sarah’s father, even better than the real thing. That a man whose gifts to a grateful nation included several arcane varieties of hedge fund could so improve upon God’s work would have surprised no one, least of all Benjamin, who, flushed and grimly sweating, now prepared to face a second match point.

“Go, Dad!” Abbie called from the shade of the court-side arbor.

“Quiet, please,” her grandfather said. He wasn’t kidding.

He served and this time it was fast and low and in and Benjamin lunged fitfully to his right and just got the edge of his racket to it, but only to hoist the ball back over the net in a high and easy lob.

With enough time for a man’s life to spool in slow motion before him, his father-in-law watched the ball descend, his racket uncoiling like a cobra for the strike, and with a perfectly timed and blistering slam, dispatched the ball in one epic bounce between Benjamin’s feet, over the wire netting behind him and into the roses. With various degrees of irony, the four spectators cheered and applauded.

“Thank you, Ben!”

“Thank
you,
George.”

Sarah watched the two most important men in her life shake hands at the net then walk toward the gate, her father with a patronizing arm draped across his son-in-law’s sweaty shoulders.

“Life in the old dog yet, eh?”

“I’d say more than enough, George.”

“Poor Benjamin,” her mother sighed.

“So, Dad, what was the score?” Josh called, as if they didn’t all know.

“Listen, it’s called manners. You don’t beat the host, didn’t anyone tell you?”

“So how come you always lose to Grandpa at home too?” The men were off the court now and stood toweling themselves beside the slatted teak table in the arbor, while Sarah’s mother poured lemonade and answered Josh’s question.

“The reason, Josh, is that your father knows very well that there isn’t a man on God’s earth who likes to win more than your grandfather. It’s the cursed gene of the Davenports. Let’s hope you haven’t inherited it.”

“Don’t worry, Grandma,” Abbie said. “Dad’s loser genes will more than compensate.”

“Hey, please,” Benjamin said. “Everybody, feel free. Let’s just call it National Get Ben Day.”

He finished his lemonade and jogged off up to the house to shower and change. Sarah’s father, probably to indicate that he didn’t need to do either of those things, strolled with the rest of them back across the lawn, grilling Abbie about her newly announced intention of going to the University of Montana. Sarah was less supportive than Benjamin on the issue, but at this moment didn’t want to let Abbie down by siding with her father, who was predictably skeptical. Abbie was arguing her case well and Sarah decided to keep out of it and wandered ahead on her own. Josh was bringing up the rear with his grandmother, keeping her up to speed on how the Chicago Cubs were doing. On Friday he had received a letter from Katie Bradstock and had been all but euphoric ever since. He wouldn’t disclose what it said but whatever had gone wrong between them was now right.

It hadn’t rained for weeks, but the grass, with its state-of-the-art sprinkling system, was a dazzling, ludicrous green. A breeze had gotten up and was rushing in the scorched leaves of the big, old oaks along the driveway. Sarah closed her eyes and breathed deeply and tried to enjoy the warmth of the sun and the feel of the grass beneath her bare feet. But the knot below her ribs wouldn’t loosen.

The place always made her tense. With its faux-colonial façade and preposterous number of rooms, it had never seemed like home. They had moved here from a much smaller and cozier place across town when Sarah was fifteen and her father’s business was bought for an obscene amount of money by a big Wall Street bank. What earthly need they had for such a palace, other than sheer ostentation, she had never been able to fathom. Particularly when they so rarely entertained and had already dispatched both her and her brother Jonathan off to boarding school. At the time Sarah had blamed the move on her mother, who came from grander New England stock. But as she had gotten older she had come to think—though would never have admitted it in front of Benjamin—that the real snob was her father. He was simply better at disguising it.

They had reached the steps to the terrace now and Sarah could hear that Abbie was getting exasperated. Why on earth, her grandfather was saying, when she had the pick of so many better colleges closer to home, would someone as smart as Abbie, a straight-A student, best at everything, want to go
someplace out the back of beyond
?

Sarah turned on him.

“Dad, it’s Montana, for heaven’s sake, not Mongolia.”

“We just did a deal with some folks in Mongolia. It’s a pretty switched-on place, as a matter of fact.”

“It wouldn’t have anything to do with meeting a certain young cowboy by any chance, would it?” Sarah’s mother asked.

Abbie groaned and turned to glare at her brother.

“Josh, you little rat, what have you been saying?”

He held up his hands, all innocent.

“I didn’t say a word!”

“You’re such a pathetic liar. Maybe you should tell everyone why suddenly you’re such a fan of the Chicago Cubs. It couldn’t have anything to do with your crush on little Katie Bradstock.”

“
Little?
Oh, and we’re so big and grown-up now, are we?”

“Children, children,” Sarah said.

By the time they reached the terrace, the bickering had calmed and Abbie was reluctantly coaxed into telling her grandparents a little about Ty. She deftly managed to steer the conversation on to her visit to his parents’ ranch, from which she had returned almost ecstatic, saying it was the loveliest place she’d ever seen, even more beautiful than The Divide.

Lunch was cold Maine lobster, flown down by special order the previous afternoon. There were also oysters and shrimp and a bewildering array of salads prepared by Rosa, who had kept house for Sarah’s parents for the last nine years without, as far as Sarah was aware, ever once smiling. Benjamin said she was probably still waiting for a reason. The oval table was covered with a heavy white linen cloth and shaded by two vast cream canvas umbrellas. There was room for at least a dozen people and instead of grouping at one end, the six of them sat several yards apart, so isolated in their own space that if anything needed passing, Rosa had to be summoned from sullen standby in the wings.

Normally, the gaps would have been filled by Sarah’s brother and his family. Jonathan was five years her junior and they had never been close. Like his father, he was in finance of some impenetrable sort and had recently taken a job in Singapore, hauling Kelly, his Texan wife, and their two identically spoiled twin daughters with him. As everyone chewed on oversize lobster and the silence grew more stubborn, Sarah was almost beginning to miss them.