The Matchmaker (27 page)

H
e loved Cambridge in the fall, winter, and spring, but he did not love it in the summer. He wouldn’t have liked it under the best of circumstances, but now he found it unbearable—air-conditioning instead of open windows, the campus inundated with foreign visitors. Even the Charles was a disappointment; it looked like spoiled chocolate milk and smelled even worse.

Box ate every meal out, most of the time venturing across the river into Boston proper to do so, because it stretched out his night. He walked for the same reason. Now, there was nothing more depressing than his apartment after dark. If left to his own devices, he would sit in a chair facing the window and drink an entire bottle of wine by himself while listening to Mozart’s Requiem.

What had he done wrong?

His thoughts skipped like a broken record: he had put work first, he had taken Dabney for granted, he had become complacent with their arrangement, he had not always returned her passionate advances and especially not in years of late, he had settled into contentment, he had assumed she would create her own happiness and excitement—and guess what? She had!

He couldn’t pretend to be surprised.

If he had known twenty-five years earlier that it would end this way—Dabney would return to Clendenin—would he have married her anyway?

Yes. The answer was yes.

Coming out of Grill 23 one night, Box bumped into a fellow he recognized. It was…he couldn’t quite grasp it at first. He had drunk a lot of wine. It was…

The man stuck his hand out. “Box?” he said. “Christian Bartelby.”

“Oh!” Box said. “Hello!” And then once his brain processed who exactly
Christian Bartelby
was, he summoned some enthusiasm. “Yes! Hello, Christian Bartelby! The good doctor!” Box was swaying on his feet. He had eaten at the bar and the comely bar maiden had enticed him into ending his evening with a glass of vintage port. Box had gazed upon the bar maiden and had wondered why it was that no other woman in the world could maintain his interest, no matter how beautiful or charming she was.

Christian held on to Box’s hand for an extra beat. “I assume you’ve heard that Miranda has gone off to New York.”

“Yes,” Box said. “She’s left us both, it seems.”

Christian Bartelby let go of Box’s hand and ran a hand through his hair. He was wearing a navy T-shirt under a navy blazer and a pair of khakis and loafers with no socks. Box wondered if Christian Bartelby was going into the restaurant to meet a date. Was everyone moving on but him?

“And your wife?” Christian Bartelby said. “How is she?”

“Ah,” Box said. “She has left me as well.”

“Left you?” Dr. Bartelby said.

“It seems so,” Box said, but he couldn’t bring himself to say any more, so he saluted the good doctor and sidled away.

Every few days, a call came from Agnes, “checking in.”

“Daddy?” she said. “Are you working?”

“Yes.”

“Eating?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“What what?”

“What are you eating?”

“Out, mostly. The usual places. Freddy at the Russell House is sick of me.” Box cleared his throat. “How is your mother?”

“She…lost her job,” Agnes said.

“What?” Box said.

“Vaughan Oglethorpe and the board asked for her resignation.”

“For what
reason
?” Box said. “Certainly not over the business with Hughes. That’s hardly legal. Her personal life is private and separate.”

There was a long pause. “She missed a lot of work this summer, Daddy,” Agnes said. “It was all documented. And Elizabeth Jennings sits on that board, and Mom felt like maybe it was a personal vendetta.”

Now it was Box’s turn to be quiet.
She missed a lot of work this summer.
Because she was with Clendenin, because Box was around and Agnes was home and thus Dabney had to conduct her rendezvouses during the workday.

Oh, Dabney, what have you done? Your life is falling apart. It didn’t have to be this way. Was he worth it? Was he?

And still, Box felt indignation on Dabney’s behalf. Vaughan Oglethorpe was a pompous, self-important ass, and Elizabeth Jennings was petty and jealous. They had done an unconscionable thing in asking Dabney to resign. It didn’t matter how much time Dabney had missed. Box and everyone else in the world knew that Dabney could run the Chamber of Commerce in her sleep, or from an outpost on the surface of Mars.

Leave my wife alone!
he thought.

“Is she there?” Box asked impulsively. Dabney had called every day with updates about the healing of Agnes’s head wound, but he hadn’t answered once, because even her voice on the message made him too upset for words. But it seemed impossible to him that Dabney would have been
fired
from the Chamber
(the very phrase was inconceivable), and she hadn’t called him to tell him. But that, he supposed, was what their new arrangement meant. Separated.   

“Um…” Agnes said. “No, she’s not home.”

Not home,
he thought.
Of course not.

T
here was only one more secret she was keeping, and it was time for that to come out as well.

Clen took the news silently, as Dabney had known he would. She waited until after they made love because their lovemaking was precious to her and she wasn’t sure how much more of it there would be. It would be one of the things she missed the most—Clen thrusting into her, his hungry mouth on her breasts, his animal moans of joy and gratitude. He was so tender that he brought her to tears every time.

She lay spent and sweating, with her head on his chest. It was astonishing the way he could encircle her with one arm, how he could make her feel safer and more protected than any man with two. She thought back to when she had believed that her symptoms—the ache in her gut, the constant exhaustion, the breathlessness, the lack of appetite—were the result of the impossible position she had put herself in. Loving two men at once.

She would give up everything—her home, her morning coffee, the sunrise and sunset, the field of flowers at Bartlett Farm, the bluebird sky, the crimson moors in fall, the bump and rumble of the Impala’s tires over the cobblestones; she would give up good books and champagne and ribbon sandwiches and lobster dipped in melted butter and the rainbow fleet sailing around Brant Point Lighthouse and her dirty tennis serve and her pearls and her penny loafers and she would give up the chance of ever holding her grandchild. She would give it all up to Death,
but please,
she thought,
please do not take
away Clendenin.

“I’m sick,” she said. The dusk was gathering, but Dabney still heard birds and bumblebees outside the screened windows of Clen’s cottage. “I have pancreatic cancer, it’s terminal, a matter of months. A few more good months.”

Clen squeezed her until she thought she would break. It genuinely hurt; her organs, already so compromised, were being crushed like soft, overripe fruit. And yet it felt good. She knew what he was doing, what he was thinking; he wanted her so close that she became him.
Come live inside me, we will be one, I will keep you safe, and you will not have to die alone.

Telling Agnes, of course, was even worse. It was one thing to leave a husband or a lover behind, and another thing entirely to leave a child.

Dabney told Agnes over breakfast—French toast with fresh peaches, crispy bacon, and home fries with herbs cut from the garden. It didn’t matter how beautiful the food was; as soon as Dabney opened her mouth, neither of them would be able to eat a bite. And yet it was Dabney’s nature to feed people. She couldn’t stop now.

“Darling,” Dabney said. “I’m sick.”

Agnes suspended a perfect slice of golden-pink peach over her plate. “What?” she said. “What kind of sick?’

“Darling,” Dabney said.

Agnes dissolved into tears. They were the tears of Little Girl Agnes—Agnes when she cut her knee on the sharp stones of the jetty, Agnes when she had a bad dream—and the heartbreak of it was almost too much for Dabney to bear.

Some days were still okay. Some days Dabney made it out for her walk and said hello to the same people and petted the same dogs. She then drove out to see Clendenin, and they swam in the pool of the big house and Clendenin made sandwiches, and Dabney ate them slowly, never wanting to arrive at the last bite. Dabney napped in the afternoon, she had to nap, she was so tired now, and in pain nearly all the time. She slept in Clendenin’s large, white, luxuriously sheeted bed while Clen read his newspapers at the oak table.

Some nights Dabney stayed at his cottage and cooked for him, and some nights she went home to see Agnes. Agnes was spending a lot of time with Riley. She met him at the beach after work, and they went out for oysters at Cru, or they grabbed fish tacos at the Easy Street Cantina.

The rosy aura around Agnes and Riley was so bright that Dabney could have seen it in the dark. Dabney wanted to ask what was going on between them, but she had learned, after forty-two couples, when to push and when to leave well enough alone. After all that had happened that summer, Agnes needed a friend, not a boyfriend.

But still, Dabney could hope.

Dabney called Nina and asked to meet her on the bench in front of the Chamber. Dabney brought two coffees from the pharmacy, with a cup of ice for Nina, and a wad of napkins in case Nina spilled her coffee upon hearing the news.

But when Dabney told her, she set her coffee down neatly between her feet, then dropped her face to her hands and cried. Dabney gave her the napkins, so she could wipe her face and blow her nose.

Dabney didn’t know what to do, think, or feel about Box.

He’d left a pair of readers by the sink in the bathroom. Everyone else Dabney knew bought their readers at the drugstore, but Box’s one vanity was specially made readers, the square black frames that defined him. Dabney couldn’t look at Box’s readers without thinking of Box’s eyes, the startling blue, the blue of glaciers—cold, she’d always thought. Frosty, indifferent, superior, when she was ill-disposed toward him.

His eyes had been so hurt that night at Elizabeth Jennings’s and then again at the Levinsons’. She had never before seen Box
hurt,
she realized. And she was the one who had done it to him.

She wanted to talk to him, tell him she was sick—but she couldn’t bring herself to do it just yet. He might think she was fabricating a story in order to gain his sympathy; he might think she was using her illness as some kind of excuse for her actions. He might think it was the ultimate in histrionics—and wasn’t it?
I’m dying, Box, please forgive me!
She didn’t call him because she had no right to ask him for mercy, no matter what her circumstances.

Agnes said, “Does Daddy know you’re sick?”

“No,” Dabney said.

“Do you want me to tell him?” Agnes asked.

“No. Please don’t. It’s not your responsibility. It’s mine.”

“You need to tell him, Mommy. I might slip.”

“Yes,” Dabney said. “I realize this.” Hiding things from Box hadn’t gone well.

Dabney called him, and as ever, was shuttled to his voice mail.

“Box,” she said. “Please,
please
call me back.” She swallowed. “Please.”

Dabney missed her job. It was nearly wedding season, and time for the fall festivals. Who would judge the best cranberry chutney, who would pin the ribbon on the biggest pumpkin, if not Dabney? She thought about the Chamber all the time, night and day. She worried about it, as she might have about a child who had been removed from her care and placed in a foster home.

Dabney couldn’t believe that no one had called her for help or advice. The fall audit would soon be upon them, and their grant proposal for the tourist council would be due. Nobody could deal with those things but Dabney. What was
happening
up there?

Nina Mobley was immediately hired as the PR director at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. It was a great job with better benefits and a large jump in salary. Dabney actually felt guilty. Had she been keeping Nina from an opportunity like this all along?

“My job at the Chamber was never about the job,” Nina said, when Dabney first went to visit her at the hospital. Nina had a corner office that overlooked the Old Mill. “It was only ever about working with you. It was about being the pulsing heart of the island. It was about strawberry frappes and you chewing your pearls and making fun of Vaughan Oglethorpe and watching to see who was driving up Main Street and Diana’s perfect cup of coffee, and the cadence of our days, which became weeks, which became months, and then years. Together.” Nina blinked and tears fell. “Eighteen and a half years I worked with my best friend. I know I should feel blessed.”

“Nina,” Dabney said. “Stop, please. I’m still here.”

“I know,” Nina said. “There is no way I can deal with this, other than to tell myself that we’re both going to live forever.”

Riley took a job playing guitar at the Brotherhood of Thieves three nights a week. One night, Dabney and Clen and Agnes went to see him. Dabney felt like a spectacle—she was out in public with her lover! But she hadn’t announced the desires of her heart to the world just so the two of them could remain sequestered at home. And her bravery paid off: they ended up having a marvelous time. They ordered a cheese board for Agnes, a favorite from her childhood, and they got thick sandwiches and chowder and curly fries, and they drank frosted mugs of beer and listened to Riley play.

He sang “Brown Eyed Girl,” by Van Morrison. Dabney had secretly requested this, and when Riley strummed the first chord, she grabbed Clen by his hand and they danced together in the small space in front of the tables. They were a broken couple—Clen with one arm, Dabney with cancer—but they could still spin like they had in high school and college, or almost, and the crowd cheered them on.

Making love in the green grass, behind the stadium with you…

She might never dance again, she realized, as she sat down, breathless, her pearls in a twist. She didn’t care. That had felt so good—wild, free, precious, lawless, the way dancing was supposed to feel.

The Brotherhood was packed with familiar faces—Julia from the office-supply store, Genevieve from Dr. Field’s office, Diana from the pharmacy lunch counter—and they all came up to Dabney, saying how sorry they were that she had retired from the Chamber and how Nantucket would never be the same.

It was Agnes who let Dabney know that Celerie wasn’t doing well. She had been devastated by the news of Dabney’s illness, and she had had her heart set on making a career at the Chamber, which wouldn’t happen now. Agnes said that Celerie had taken to her bed, and could not be persuaded to leave her house.

“Took to her bed?” Dabney said. She had a hard time imagining Celerie lying down at all; the girl was always on the move. “Really?”

“She’s like your…groupie…your disciple,” Agnes said. “I mean, look at her, Mom. The headband? The pearls? Come on.”

Celerie was working the occasional catering job, but she had no long-term plan beyond volunteering as the cheerleading coach at the Boys & Girls Club. She was considering moving back to Minnesota.

Dabney decided to call Vaughan Oglethorpe. Clen was in the room when she did it.

Clen said, “I can’t believe you’re calling that grotesque zombie bastard.”

Dabney said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

And as it turned out, Vaughan was happy to hear from Dabney. He sounded as he had always sounded, prior to showing up in the office to fire Dabney—like an uncle hearing from his favorite, long-lost niece.

“Dabney!” he said. “Your voice is music to my ears.”

Dabney heard actual music—the heavy, doomed chords of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue—in the background. Funeral-parlor music. Anyone’s voice would be an improvement over that.

“I have a matter I’d like to discuss,” Dabney said.

“I hope you’re calling to tell me that you want your job back,” Vaughan said. “Because ever since I asked for your resignation, I’ve been itching to retract my words. The Chamber is nothing without you, Dabney. The second you walked out of there, it started falling apart. I had to hire a temp, and Elizabeth Jennings agreed to handle the phones, but only during hours that are convenient for her. I’m at a loss. I need you to come back. I can even offer you a pay raise.”

Dabney stifled a laugh. What Vaughan didn’t understand was that Dabney would have done her job all those years for half, or a quarter, of her salary. Hell, she would have done it for free.

“I’m not coming back, Vaughan,” she said. “I do have a suggestion for a new director, however.”

True, Celerie was young. But she had energy and enthusiasm and a fresh outlook. She was bright and she learned quickly. She had the fire. She also would have a direct line to Dabney. Dabney would consult with her until…

“Well,” Dabney said. “Until I’m not able to consult anymore.”

Vaughan made some phlegmy, throat-clearing noise that Dabney knew was meant to conceal his relief.

“Okay,” he said. “Have Celerie e-mail me her résumé. Pronto.”

Next, it was out to Celerie’s house—a sad little rental on Hooper Farm Road. As soon as Dabney pulled into the driveway, she realized that this was the house that her friends Moe and Curly used to rent. Moe and Curly had surfed at Madequecham Beach back when Dabney and Clen were in high school and college. Dabney had come to parties at this house; she had thrown up in the backyard after too many vodkas with grape soda.

Dabney chuckled as she walked up to the front door. She was Dabney now and she had been Dabney then, but they were two different people.

Sometimes life seemed very long.

And other times, not.

Dabney knocked, and Celerie opened the door right away. She was holding a paperback copy of
Emma,
by Jane Austen. She was wearing a short blue terry-cloth robe. And pearls. And the navy headband with the white stars.

Dabney knew she had been right to come.

Celerie’s mouth formed a tiny O of surprise, the way other girls her age might react to a visit from Justin Beiber, or the way Dabney’s grandmother, Agnes Bernadette, would have reacted to a visit from the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.

“That’s my favorite book, you know,” Dabney said.

“Yes,” Celerie said, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I know.”

“Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?” Dabney asked.

“Of course.” Celerie indicated the room before her, featuring a gray, tweedy-looking sofa, a large square rag rug, a boxy TV with rabbit-ear antennae, and a rotary phone. “We call this room the museum because nothing actually works.”

Dabney laughed. She could just barely smell the marijuana smoke of thirty years earlier, and see the hazy silhouettes of Moe and Curly and a girl they all called Meg the Drunk Slut, crowded around a red glass bong.

Celerie wiped at her eyes. “I just made a batch of watermelon lemonade. Can I offer you a glass?”