The Matchmaker (23 page)

B
ox was relentless. He went with her everywhere now. She was never alone. They went to dinner together, they read together, they went to bed together. There were still no sexual overtures from him, which was a blessing.

During her walk, she called Clen.

He said, “Jesus, woman, when am I going to see you?”

She said, “I was free yesterday at five, but you had plans. What plans?”

He said, “That I can’t tell you.”

She said, “Elizabeth Jennings?”

He said, “I hate to tell you this, Cupe, but you sound jealous.”

“I am jealous,” she said. “What were the plans?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “But it wasn’t Elizabeth. She did, however, drop off a homemade blueberry pie on my porch with a little note.”

“Homemade pie? Elizabeth?” Dabney said. “Her chef probably made it.”

“Jealous
and
catty!” Clen said. He sounded delighted.

“I can come today at five, “ Dabney said. “Or do you have plans again?”

“No plans,” he said. “Except to devour you.”

Dabney went to see Clen at five, but she had to do so under the auspices of going to the salon to get her hair cut. She figured this bought her an hour and a half, which she and Clen desperately needed. She listened to his voice in her ear, she tasted his skin, she felt him squeeze her—it hurt! But squeeze harder!—and it was just like she had never been apart from him. He was hers, she was his, they were one.

But then the countdown began. They had fifteen minutes left, then ten, then five.

“Will you miss me?” she asked.

“I miss you already,” he said.

As Dabney gathered her car keys, she watched the storm cloud cross his face, which exactly matched the shadow over her heart. She hated to leave him.

“I have to tell Box,” she said. “I want to be with you all the time.”

“So tell Box,” he said.

She nodded. “I will.” And then she thought,
I can’t.

She had asked Clen again what his plans had been the day before at five o’clock and he had again declined to say, calling her a nosey parker. Her gut told her it was Elizabeth Jennings and Clen just didn’t want to admit it, but they had such a good time together that Dabney didn’t want to spoil it in a tug-of-war of accusation and denial.

He deserved his privacy, she thought. Though she didn’t believe this.

When she arrived home, Box studied her hair with narrowed eyes. “It looks the same,” he said.

“My hair always looks the same,” Dabney said. “It’s looked exactly the same since the fourth grade, when my grandmother bought me my first headband. Pink grosgrain ribbon with navy-blue whales, purchased at Murray’s Toggery.” Dabney narrowed her eyes right back at him. “God, I remember that day so vividly. Why do you think that is? Because of the headband? My grandmother didn’t spend money on pretty things, but she bought me that headband to keep the hair out of my eyes and I was thrilled with it.”

Box moved in closer, then lifted a lock of her hair and sniffed it. “It doesn’t smell like it usually does when you get back from the salon.”

Dabney swatted him away. “What are you
talking
about?”

“Your hair doesn’t have the salon smell and it looks the same as when you left.”

Dabney couldn’t believe this. Box had never before noticed the “salon smell” of her hair.

He said, “Dabney, did you go to the salon?”

“Yes!” she said. There was exasperation in her voice that was exasperation about having to lie. “Call the salon yourself if you don’t believe me!”

For a second, she thought he might do exactly that. She tried to imagine how compromised Box’s dignity would be if he stooped to calling the salon to confirm that Dabney had actually been in for an appointment. And then when Lindsey, the receptionist, said that no, they hadn’t seen Dabney that afternoon, Dabney’s appointment was for Saturday afternoon (so that her hair would look nice and smell pretty for the Levinsons’ annual Backyard BBQ on Abrams Point), what would Box say?

Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry, because Box let the issue go, and Dabney was able to breathe. That night, they went to the Proprietors with Agnes—who seemed preoccupied and strangely quiet—and a certain normalcy was restored.

But as she and Box brushed their teeth and climbed into bed that night, she thought,
I don’t want normalcy.

She wanted Clendenin.

H
e received the news of Miranda Gilbert’s resignation not over the phone, as he would have expected, but by a letter mailed to the Nantucket house. The letter was written on heavy, creamy stock; initially, Box thought it might be a thank-you note for the ill-conceived and aborted weekend on Nantucket. But when he read it, he realized it was something else entirely.

Box set the letter down on his blotter, then let out a long, frustrated stream of air.

“Goddammit!” he bellowed.

He was losing Miranda. She had been with him a long time, longer than any other postdoc research assistant; their compatibility had been remarkable. He would never find anyone like her, not anyone close.

“Goddammit!”

Dabney was somewhere in the house. No doubt she heard him yelling, but she wouldn’t knock. She found the closed door to his study intimidating.

He read the letter again. Certain things about it nagged at him, starting with the first word,
Dearest.
“Dearest Box.”

Was he, in fact, her dearest? Was all this related to the nonsense Dabney had conjured up? Was Miranda Gilbert
in love
with Box, as Dabney had claimed?

There was the use of the word
stimulating.

There was news of the broken engagement, the details of which she dared not mention. A broken engagement today, when a week or so earlier, everything had been hunky-dory? Box had asked after the good doctor, and Miranda had told Box that Christian was utterly absorbed with work, but that this was as per usual.
For reasons that I dare not mention in this letter.
What did
that
mean? To Box, it felt like Miranda must have gone directly home from Nantucket and ended the relationship.

What had Dabney
said
to her?

Then the zinger that Miranda was moving to New York, to Columbia, to work with Wilma Dresdalay. Wilma’s name had been mentioned casually, as though Miranda were
unaware
that Wilma was the only living economist whose work Box consistently admired and even envied. There was only one person Miranda would be wise to leave Box for, and that was Wilma. He couldn’t fault her one bit.

Then the line
I will miss you terribly.
This was the line that Box fixated on. She would miss him terribly. It sounded heartfelt, nearly romantic. Well, yes, Box would miss her terribly as well. She was singular and extraordinary. He tried not to think of how her smile lit up the offices, or how he enjoyed her accent the way one enjoyed music, or how on the occasions when they went to the movies together, she grabbed his arm in excitement or fear. When they went to dinner with colleagues, she presented beautifully, with her strawberry hair in a loose bun, and her clothes soft and feminine; she wore a lot of ivory and peach, which flattered her complexion. Her knowledge of wine was comprehensive; she liked trying new varietals and vineyards and she always chose wines that she knew would excite and please Box.

He admitted to himself that he would miss Miranda Gilbert terribly as well, and not only as a colleague. The thought of her leaving caused his heart to sputter like a dying engine. She had been, perhaps more than anything else, his friend.

Fondly and with inexpressible gratitude
—those words were appropriate, and mutual.

“Goddammit!”

The third time brought Dabney to the door.

“Box?” she said, knocking lightly. “Are you all right?”

He opened the door and thrust the letter into Dabney’s hands, but he didn’t wait for her to read it.

“Miranda has resigned, she’s going to Columbia to work with Wilma.” He cleared his throat. “Seems she’s broken off the engagement with Christian.”

“Oh,” Dabney said. “Wow!”

F
ive days of silence from CJ. It was now a standoff. He was waiting for her to break down and change her mind. The silence was also eerie; she hadn’t believed him capable of it.

She started joining Riley for trips to the beach after work. She swam while he surfed, then they lay around on his cherry-red beach blanket like a couple of seals and enjoyed the golden hour—the hour when the sun was sublime and mellow. Despite the turmoil of the summer, Agnes relaxed with Riley.

One night, she let Clendenin cook her dinner. Fried rice with authentic spices that he had ordered on the Internet—the fragrant rice was a deep yellow and was studded with delicious tidbits—golden raisins, lacquered pork, rock shrimp—that looked like tiny gems. That night, Clen talked about what Dabney had been like in high school—how popular and confident she had been, her elaborate matchmaking schemes, even among the faculty, her love of Nantucket. Dabney had been salutatorian of their class, and Clen the valedictorian; Dabney had been bitter about that, Clen said. He had her by three-tenths of a percentage point in GPA and forty points verbal and ten points math in the SAT—but she had gotten into Harvard and he hadn’t. Back then, it had been easier to get into Harvard as a girl, or so Clen had told himself at the time. Dabney used to keep a notebook, he said, of her favorite streets on the island. Charter Street, in the fish lots, was her very favorite. She wanted to live on Charter Street when she grew up, and if not Charter, then Quince, or Lily.

After dinner, Clen poured them each a bourbon and he smoked a cigarette on the front porch while Agnes did the dishes. Then she joined him on the porch and they looked at the stars in the sky, and at the large, empty, illuminated house that it was Clen’s job to caretake.

Agnes said, “Will you stay here on Nantucket?”

“I don’t see ever leaving again,” Clendenin said. “Unless something happens to your mother. For me, this island is home, but it’s home because of Dabney. I moved here when I was fourteen. I lived here only three weeks before she befriended me, and as soon as she did, I never wanted to leave. She gives this island its meaning. Dabney, Nantucket. Nantucket, Dabney.” He exhaled. “And long as she stays, I stay.”

Agnes wanted to ask him what he thought was going to happen. Did he think Dabney would leave Box? And…marry him? At that moment, Agnes understood that she had gotten way too involved in the love triangle. Her mother, her father, her other father.

She gathered up the keys to the Prius. “I’d better go,” she said.

S
he was at the farm, selecting ears of corn for dinner. She felt so weak and so sick, she could barely stand. She should have called the doctor weeks ago—but as soon as she resolved to do it, she felt better, or life got in the way. That morning, Dr. Marcus Cobb, Nina Mobley’s beau, had gone fishing and caught five striped bass. When he came into the office to take Nina out to lunch, he gave Dabney a heavy bag of fresh filets.

Dabney had been thrilled with the fish; she instantly planned dinner: grilled striped bass, corn on the cob, farm greens lightly dressed. It had sounded like the perfect meal at noon, but now, at five, Dabney was in so much pain that she wanted to take a pill and sleep until morning.

Forbearance.
She would choose the corn. The fish was already marinating on her kitchen counter. With a few simple instructions, Agnes could pull dinner together.

Suddenly, there was a woman at the corn crib, trying to get Dabney’s attention. It was Elizabeth Jennings.

“Elizabeth!” Dabney said. “Hello!” She was in too much pain to talk to Elizabeth. The pain was like a black marble, and Dabney was suspended inside.

“Dabney!” Elizabeth said. “I’m so happy I bumped into you. I have the most interesting piece of news to share.”

Dabney was wary of “interesting pieces of news,” because they were usually rumors or gossip, and yet people came to her with “interesting pieces of news” all the time. Dabney did
not
want to hear any “interesting pieces of news” from Elizabeth Jennings, that was for darn sure.

“I’m in a terrible hurry,” Dabney said. She indiscriminately stuck two final ears of corn into her recyclable shopping bag.

But Elizabeth either didn’t hear Dabney or she chose to ignore her. She said, “You’re friends with Clendenin Hughes, right?”

Dabney froze. Her insides contorted. Lovesick.

Elizabeth said, “When we had dinner a few weeks ago, he told me the two of you have known each other since high school. So sweet!” Elizabeth smiled, showing off her capped teeth. She was wearing a turquoise-and-white dress with matching turquoise sandals, and her toenails, Dabney noticed, were painted the same shade of turquoise. Was it possible that Elizabeth Jennings had her pedicure done each day to match her outfit? It wasn’t impossible. What else did Elizabeth Jennings have to do all day except gossip and chase after Clendenin? She wasn’t even at the corn crib to pick out
corn,
Dabney realized. She had come only to torment Dabney!

“I have to go,” Dabney said. She turned to her cart and loaded in her ears.

“I went to Clen’s house to drop off a pie I made,” Elizabeth said.

Involuntarily, Dabney shook her head. There was
no way
Elizabeth had made a pie.

“And there was a young woman pulling out of his driveway as I was pulling in. A very beautiful young woman. I think Clendenin has a girlfriend!”

Dabney barely made it to the Impala before the pain became unbearable. Elizabeth Jennings had been jealous, spiteful even, and possibly suspicious of Dabney’s relationship with Clen. Either she had wanted Dabney to tell her who this young mystery woman was or she wanted Dabney to commiserate. Men always chose younger women. Life was unfair in many aspects, but this, perhaps, was the most unfair.

At the very least, Dabney knew that Elizabeth Jennings hadn’t been the guest at five o’clock. Someone else had been.

Dabney called Clen from the parking lot.

She said, “Who were your plans with the other day? When I wanted to come over at five o’clock and you said you were busy?”

He sighed. “I’m sorry, Cupe. I can’t tell you.”

“Clen!” she shouted. She was in
so much pain,
and now this. “A young woman? A beautiful young woman?”

“Dabney,” he said. “I can’t tell you.”

The sharp, shining knives piercing her gut.…She moaned. Her insides were being gnawed on by millions of tiny razor teeth.

I think Clendenin has a girlfriend!

I’m sorry, Cupe. I can’t tell you.

Lovesick.

No,
she thought.

In the morning, she called Genevieve at Dr. Field’s office. “I need to talk to Ted,” she said. “Please, I think it’s an emergency.”

“Like, an emergency-room emergency?” Genevieve said.

“Please, Genevieve,” Dabney said. “I need to talk to Ted. Can you make that happen?”

 “For you, I can make anything happen.”

Ted Field set it all up. He sent Dabney’s blood work to the correct person at Mass General, and they scheduled a CT scan for Thursday morning.

“You do realize,” Ted Field said, “that you have to go to Boston.”

“Yes,” Dabney said. It had long been her mantra that she would leave the island only if her life depended on it. Now, she was suddenly certain, her life depended on it.

She told Box first.

“I spoke to Ted Field,” she said. “I’m going to Boston for a CT scan.”

“That sounds serious,” he said. “I’ll go with you.”

“No,” Dabney said. “I’m going alone.”

“It’s my city and it’s been aeons since you’ve been there, or anywhere else, by yourself. Let me go with you. We can end the day with dinner at Harvest, spend the night in my apartment, and come back in the morning.”

“That sounds like your idea of a lovely time,” Dabney said. “I want to go and come back, and I am going alone.”

“You have
got
to be kidding me,” Box said.

“First flight to Boston on Thursday,” she said. “Last flight back Thursday.”

“You can’t possibly expect me to believe that you’re going alone,” he said.

“I’m going alone,” she said.

She told Clen next.

“Boston on Thursday,” she said. “I have to have some tests.”

“I don’t like the way that sounds,” he said. “Let me go with you.”

“You can’t,” she said.

“Wanna bet?”

“Clen.”

He frowned. “Is the economist going with you?”

“No,” she said. “I’m going alone.”

She told Agnes, and then Nina. Boston on Thursday for tests. Before either of them could open her mouth, she said, “I’m going alone.”

At the airline counter, she accepted her boarding pass and thought,
Am I really doing this?
It would have been far easier with Box or Clen or Agnes or Nina there to prop her up. But she felt it was important that she go alone, self-motivated, powered by her own two feet.

At the very moment the airplane lifted off the ground, something fell back down to earth. Her spirit, her soul, her self. She was nothing but a shell.

Taxi, Ted Williams Tunnel, Cambridge Street, Mass General. She had seen the Prudential Building and the Hancock Tower as she flew in. Skyscrapers, the wider world. It was just Boston, she reminded herself, only ninety miles from home. She had gone to college across the river, she had made it through four years of higher education; she would make it through today.

Blood pressure, temperature, needles, hundreds of medical questions, culminating with the CT scan, which was like something out of science fiction.

Then, a rather lengthy wait, while a doctor read the scan. Everyone at the hospital was being solicitous. Rosemary, the nurse-practitioner in Imaging, treated Dabney like she was a minor celebrity.

She said, “This is all being expedited. We know you want to get home.”

Dabney supposed that Dr. Field had some influence here, or maybe Box did, via Dr. Christian Bartelby.

She ate a tuna fish sandwich in the cafeteria. She looked around at all the other people—some sick, some healthy, some hospital employees. There were so many people in the world, people she didn’t know and who didn’t know her. That was, perhaps, the scariest thing of all.

Dr. Chand Rohatgi was a handsome Indian man with kind eyes.

“There’s someone here with you?” he said.

“No,” she said. “I came alone.”

He nodded. His face was pained.

“Just tell me,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Not a great prognosis,” he said.

Cancer of the pancreas, which had metastasized, already, to her liver. The lungs would likely be next. It wasn’t resectable, and considering her level of pain, she wouldn’t be strong enough for chemotherapy, and there was no guarantee that chemo would do anything other than make her sicker. At this point, Dr. Rohatgi said, there was little they could do but hope the progression was slow. He could help her manage the pain.

She said, “How long…?”

 “Difficult to say.”

 “Will I live to see the lights on Main Street at Christmas Stroll? It’s my busiest weekend of the year.”

He looked puzzled. He wasn’t familiar with Christmas Stroll, he said, but if it was in December, there was a chance, maybe. Again, difficult to say.

A chance, maybe?
she thought. Christmas Stroll was only four months away. Was he telling her then that she didn’t even have
four months
?
She felt blindsided. Someone else should not be able to tell you you’re dying.

No wonder she felt like a shell. Her insides were being consumed by disease.

She said, “I’ve always been an intuitive person. I thought it was something else. I thought I was…lovesick.”

He said, “Yes, I can understand that. The symptoms are probably similar.”

Or perhaps Dr. Rohatgi didn’t say
the symptoms are probably
similar,
perhaps he didn’t say
a chance, maybe,
perhaps he didn’t say
metastasized, already, to the liver
. Dabney walked out of the hospital in a state of extreme confusion, and the most confusing thing was this: she wasn’t thinking about Agnes, or Clen, or Box. She was thinking about her mother.

Dr. Donegal had asked her time and again, during the eight or nine years that she had gone to see him, to describe what had happened the night Dabney’s mother left. Time and again, Dabney had stared mutely at Dr. Donegal because she couldn’t remember.

Why, then, all these years later, with the onset of this…news…was the scene so crisp in Dabney’s mind? The suite at the Park Plaza, a ceramic vase holding ostrich feathers, the chandelier in the lobby that was as big and bright as a bonfire, the king-size bed that Dabney had been allowed to jump on for as long as it took her mother to put on her makeup, the front-row-center orchestra seats at
The Nutcracker,
her mother tapping out the rhythm of the music on Dabney’s hand during the “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” and Dabney agape at the beauty of the ballerina, her ability to float, twirl, fly. At the hotel afterward there were cheeseburgers from room service and, for Dabney, a hot fudge sundae. Her mother had been drinking red wine, which was what she drank at home, and it always turned her teeth blue, which Dabney found funny.
Why blue and not red, Mama?
It was quite late, Dabney remembered, pitch-black outside, and it had started to snow, and Dabney’s mother lifted her up to the window so she could see. Dabney was wearing her white flannel nightgown, she had spilled chocolate sauce down the front, which upset her, she grew weepy, she was tired. She brushed her teeth and climbed into the big bed and her mother sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed her hair from her face. Her mother was engulfed in green smoke, she might have been a bit drunk, her words were slurred, she said some things about Dabney’s father that Dabney didn’t understand, how he had come back from the war and vowed,
Nantucket, always Nantucket,
and her mother couldn’t do it anymore but her father wouldn’t live anywhere else.
I’ll always love you, Dabney, you will always be my little girl, this is hard for me, so hard.
Her mother’s perfume had smelled like a sugar plum, or so Dabney had thought that night. Her mother’s pearls had glowed even in the darkened room. She was right there on the edge of the bed, and then when Dabney woke up she was gone. May, the Irish chambermaid, was there.

Mama! Where’s my mama?

Your father is coming for you, my sweet.

Bye bye, Miss American Pie.

Mama!

Dabney climbed into a taxi. She was just able to tell the driver, “Logan Terminal C, please,” before the tears squeezed out from the corners of her eyes. They were not tears about the news, because the news was incomprehensible. She cried all the way to the airport because her mother had left, and still, to this very day, Dabney missed her.

There was no rhyme or reason to her thoughts. It just wasn’t possible, it was too terrifying to comprehend. She was very sick. She would die. She would die? It was a door she would step through without knowing what was on the other side. Her grandmother, Agnes Bernadette, had believed in Heaven, fluffy clouds, angels, harps, peace, and that was what Dabney had grown up believing. But now that she was faced with the concrete reality, she thought,
Angels? Harps?

Then she thought,
Everyone dies, absolutely everyone, there is no escaping it,
so the only reasonable option was to focus on the time she had left.

Dr. Rohatgi had urged her not to look too far ahead.
Take things a moment at a time,
he’d said. He had given her some literature, which she stuffed into her purse, and a prescription to ease her pain. She thought of Clen, Box, Agnes, Nina Mobley, Riley, Celerie, Vaughan Oglethorpe, Diana at the pharmacy who made her coffee, people she cherished, the people who made her who she was. She would tell no one. But was that feasible? She was holding in so many secrets now. How long would it be until she burst, like a dam?

Dabney’s life had been safe with her mother, and then not safe. Then safe again, and then when Clendenin left, not safe. Then safe for a long time, but now, not safe. Everyone’s life had moments of both. She liked to believe she was special because of what she’d survived, but this last thing she would not survive. Incomprehensible. The literature in her purse was supposed to help her grapple with being terminally ill, but who wrote such literature? And how did they know the best strategies for grappling? Nobody knew what happened next.