A Summer Affair (9 page)

“I can’t beat it, Claire,” Matthew had said then. “The bottle. I can’t fucking beat it.”

The bottle, Claire thought, should have been easier than the cocaine—but in the past twelve years, Matthew had been in three times for alcohol abuse. Claire thought back to high school. In those days, she was the only one who could get away with buying beer. She put her hair in hot rollers and wore her mother’s long black skirt and sensible flat shoes—she looked, Matthew used to say, like one of the Amish, but she never once got carded. They drank in fields, in the woods, and, in summertime, at the quarry, where Matthew, plastered, used to dive into the jade green water from the highest outcrop of rocks. He had been so cavalier; he had thought himself indestructible. They drank at the beach or at one of the empty rental houses on the street across from the beach. They wandered the boardwalk, ogling its carnival atmosphere—the blue and green neon spokes of the Ferris wheel, the strings of round lights outlining the Kettle Korn, taffy, and Slushee stands, the hundreds of kitschy shops (
Greetings from Wildwood!
)—with a sense of hilarious wonder. The drinking had been innocent, a mood enhancer, and it was rebellion, too, of course. It was usually only part of the night and not the night itself (though there were exceptions to that, nights when either she or Matthew, or both of them, drank so much that they puked until dawn). For the most part, the nights of their youth had been about music. Matthew took his guitar everywhere; he slung it over his back and placed it next to them on the beach or in the grass when they made love. He sang to their group of friends, to strangers, he sang to Claire, he sang to himself. There had been plenty of times when Claire grew jealous of the music, when she accused Matthew of being obsessed with it. Music was his drug back then.

It surprised Claire that alcohol had reached out and grabbed Matthew, as an adult, by the neck. Why him and not her? Of course, his life—in the interim between their last month together, August 1987, and the present—had contained excesses such as Claire could only imagine. Matthew had told her about some of it—the drugs, the alcohol, the girls, the parties, the complete lack of scruples characteristic of a rock-and-roll tour bus. There was not one wholesome thing about his Stormy Eyes Tour: not one night where he drank water and went to bed early, not one sentence uttered without a swear word, not one steamed vegetable, not one breath of air that didn’t contain the sweet suggestion of marijuana smoke. It was all vodka and tits, he said. And pressure. That was the real monkey on his back: the pressure.

Claire had spoken to Matthew in the Minneapolis airport, as he awaited his escort to Hazelden, for nearly an hour. Mostly it was him talking, reminiscing, apologizing.

I should never have let you go. We were happy.

Happy,
she said.

Your father hated me.

He did not.

Your mother thought I sang off-key.

Don’t be silly. She thought you had the voice of an angel.

Remember when I sang at the Pony? Things were simple then.

Simple,
Claire said. She laughed.
Remember when you let me play the tambourine?

You were a regular Tracy Partridge.

She could hear him smiling.

I miss you,
he said.
If you ever need anything, anything at all
. . .

Or if
you
ever need anything,
she said.

Ask,
he said.

Ask,
she said.

So. She had an ancient cell phone number and Bruce’s number in L.A. Call Bruce! It was only October. If Max called her back in three weeks or a month or even two months, that would still leave plenty of time to book him as the talent. Or she could write to Matthew’s mother, Sweet Jane Westfield, who still lived on East Aster Road in Wildwood Crest. Claire got a Christmas card from her every year. Sweet Jane was the one constant in Matthew’s life; if Jane received a note from Claire, she would pin it to her corkboard over the sink (Claire could see the corkboard plain as day, as well as the crocheted cover that went over the teakettle) and she would mention it to Matthew when he called, which he did every Sunday.

Claire would do both. She found Sweet Jane’s address in her book and handwrote a note in large print, explaining that she needed to get ahold of Matthew. She wanted Matthew to play a short concert here on Nantucket to benefit a children’s charity.
It’s not for me,
Claire wrote.
It’s for the island kids. Would you please have him call me? My number is
. . . In a PS she mentioned that her kids were doing well—no doubt Sweet Jane still had Zack’s birth announcement pinned to the corkboard—and she asked after Monty, Sweet Jane’s cat.

Next she dialed Bruce Mandalay, Matthew’s agent. Bruce Mandalay was the person who’d discovered Matthew at the Stone Pony. It came as a surprise because although there were always agents and managers and record producers at the Stone Pony (thanks to Springsteen and Bon Jovi), they were normally easy to pick out. They had slick hair and diamond earrings; they wore suits. Bruce Mandalay looked like a manager at a box factory; he was
ordinary.
Paunchy, balding, with rimless glasses and a mustache and sturdy wing-tip shoes. He was soft-spoken, nonthreatening to the point of invisibility. Matthew had signed with him because he was serious, smart, sensible. Bruce thought the song “Parents Know” could be a single; he offered to put the money up himself to have Matthew record it professionally in New York. Matthew did so, and then, almost immediately, Bruce hooked him up with Columbia. Just like that, Matthew shot toward the stars.

When Matthew went to New York to record the single, he’d insisted Claire come along. She rode in the back of Bruce’s Pinto from Wildwood to Manhattan. Bruce had treated her nicely, better than she had thought a tagalong girlfriend would be treated. At a rest stop, Bruce bought her a cheeseburger and a Coke; he asked her about college. She told him, “RISD,” and he said, “Impressive.” He had five daughters himself, he said.

But as Matthew became more important to Bruce, Claire became less important. When she showed up backstage at the Beacon Theatre eighteen months later (Max West was opening for the Allman Brothers), Bruce didn’t recognize her. Was she that forgettable, or were there just so many girls by then that Bruce couldn’t keep track? Claire had been out of touch for so long now that she might have to remind Bruce who she was, but that was okay. There had been hundreds of girls for Matthew, possibly even thousands, including two wives and one unfortunate mistress (the most famous actress of modern times), but Claire had the distinction of being the first girl, the one Matthew had loved before he was famous.

“Hello? Bruce Mandalay.”

“Bruce?” Claire said. “This is Claire Danner calling.”

There was a pause. Well, the request for tickets had been two years ago. And it was possible that Claire had an inflated view of her importance in Matthew’s history.

“I’m Matthew’s—”

“Yes,” Bruce said. “Claire, yes, hello.” His voice sounded the same, very calm and metered. He was a nonagent agent; nothing got him excited or riled up. Being Max West’s agent must have made him a rich and powerful man, but you would never know it. Claire wondered about his five daughters. They had been younger than Claire, but by now they were all grown. Bruce might even be a grandfather. Claire didn’t have time to ask. She had to pick up the kids from school in fifteen minutes.

“I have a favor to ask, Bruce.”

“Tickets?” Bruce said. “Max is in Southeast Asia. He’s not playing in the States again until spring.”

“It’s not tickets,” Claire said. It was so much more than tickets that she wasn’t sure how to ask. A free ninety-minute concert on a baseball diamond for a thousand wealthy summer people who might not even dance. She’d eaten a salami sandwich for lunch, and now she had heartburn.

“No?” Bruce said, and his voice sounded both interested and wary.

“I’m the cochair of a benefit here on Nantucket,” Claire said. “It’s called the summer gala. It’s cocktails and dinner for a thousand people. And traditionally, there’s a concert.”

Silence.

“It’s a charity event,” Claire said. “A thousand dollars a ticket, and all the money goes to this organization I’m involved with called Nantucket’s Children.”

Silence.

“I want Matthew—Max, I mean—to play it.”

Silence.

“For free.”

Had Bruce hung up? She wouldn’t have blamed him if he had.

“It’s August sixteenth, a Saturday,” Claire said. “Here, on Nantucket. Nantucket is off the coast of—”

“I know where Nantucket is.”

“Okay,” Claire said. She took a deep breath. “What do you think?”

She heard the shuffling of papers. Bruce Mandalay cleared his throat. “Hollywood Hospice, Doctors without Borders, Save the Children, the United Way of Orange County, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Dade County SPCA, the Druckenheimer Center for the Elderly of Saint Louis, the Kapistan School for the Blind, the Red Cross, the Seattle Symphony, the Redbone fishing tournament for cystic fibrosis, the Home for Retarded Citizens of Rock City, Iowa, the Conservancy Project at Estes Park, the First Baptist Church of Tupelo, the Jackson, Mississippi, Botanical Gardens, the Cleveland Clinic, Arthur Ashe Youth Tennis and Education, DATA—that’s Bono’s thing in Africa—the Mount Rushmore Restoration Concern—”

“Okay,” Claire said. “Stop. I get it.”

Bruce sighed. He was a nonagent agent and he had bought the cheeseburger and the Coke for Claire so long ago, when she had no money for lunch herself—but he wasn’t exactly kind, either. Maybe he had been kind at one time, but representing Max West through twenty years of meteoric success had made him . . . a realist. It was hard to be a realist
and
kind.

“Claire . . . ,” he said.

She should never have called. She should have mailed the letter to Sweet Jane and waited to hear back. Jane Westfield
was
sweet, she
was
kind, she had known Claire since Claire was twelve years old, she wouldn’t give Claire a song and dance . . . but what, really, did Claire know? Maybe she would. Claire felt like she was going to cry. It was rejection, plain and simple, and the thing was, she deserved it—for being so smug, for assuming that she had been an unforgettable influence in Matthew’s life.
You don’t forget your high school sweetheart, do you?
But maybe you did. She hadn’t seen Matthew in forever and a day.

Lock doesn’t think you’ll be able to deliver.
She couldn’t deliver. She experienced vestiges of an old hurt—Claire, out behind the Stone Pony, hugging Matthew, holding on to him for dear life, knowing she was going to lose him—and it was combined with the hurt she was going to feel when she told Lock Dixon, who admired her and believed in her, that she couldn’t get Max West.

“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I get it. All those people want him.”

“Those are just the requests from this month,” Bruce said. “This is what’s come in since he’s been gone. He turned down
Bono,
Claire. And nearly all of these organizations are willing to pay . . .”

“I know,” Claire said. “I just thought I’d ask.”

“You were right to ask,” Bruce said.

He was quiet again, and Claire thought,
Please let’s just end this call
. Did he expect her to make nice and ask about his daughters now?

“Do you know who I work for?” he said.

“Who?” Claire said.

“Max West.”

“Right.”

“He’s like my own son,” Bruce said. “I know everything about him. For example, I know he’s in Brunei right now, jonesing like crazy because the sultan is Muslim and his kingdom is dry.”

“Right,” Claire said. There were only ten minutes until pickup; she had to hang up. “Listen, would you do me a favor? If you talk to Max, will you tell him I called and just
ask
him? Tell him it’s really, really important to me . . .”

“I don’t have to ask him,” Bruce said. “I know everything about him. If I tell him you called and asked for this crazy, inconceivable thing, I know what he’ll say.”

“What?”

“He’ll say yes.”

“What?”

“He’ll say,
For Claire Danner, yes.
Free concert, no problem, sure. Saturday, August sixteenth. You’re lucky because he happens to be free. He flies to Spain a few days later. So, yes, he’ll be there.”

Claire stood up from the bed. She started to bounce—she couldn’t help herself—but she didn’t want Bruce to know she was bouncing.

“Really?” she said. “You think?”

“I don’t think,” Bruce said. “I know. He’ll be there.”

CHAPTER FOUR

He Surprises Her

O
n Sunday, Jason and J.D. spent all day scalloping, and on Monday night, Claire sautéed the scallops for dinner and served them with risotto and asparagus. Claire wanted Jason to be happy about dinner because he was
not
happy to hear she had another gala meeting.

“Is this what it’s going to be like?” he asked. “Two, three nights a week, you at meetings? Leaving me with the kids?”

“They’re your kids, too,” Claire said. “It will be good for you to spend time with them. It will be good for them to spend time with you.”

“Just answer my question,” Jason said. “Is this what it’s going to be like?”

“Only at first,” Claire promised blindly.

“I told you, it was a mistake. You should have said no.”

“Well, I can’t back out now, can I?”

“No,” Jason said grudgingly.

“No,” Claire said. There had been a crackled message on the machine, left late Friday night while Jason and Claire were at Joe’s fortieth birthday party. It was Matthew, calling from Brunei, saying he was coming to Nantucket in August.

“I can’t wait to see you again,” he said. “God, this is going to be great!”

Even Jason was impressed with Claire for locking up Max West so quickly, so easily, and for free. Claire had let the news slip after a couple of glasses of champagne at Joe’s birthday party—
Looks like Max West is playing the gala
—and voilà! Five people agreed to be on her committee, including Julie Jackson’s husband, Brent. Hurray! Claire might have been a rock star herself. Joe’s wife put a Max West CD on the stereo and everyone danced, and Claire heard Jason say, “Yeah, he’ll probably stay with us. He’s crazy about Claire. They dated, you know, in high school. They nearly got married.”

So there was no backing out now.

The kids regarded their dinner plates dolefully. Even J.D., who had been so proud of bringing home two bushels of scallops, didn’t want to eat them.

“Do we have to?” Shea asked.

“Yes,” Jason said. He was snarfing down his food, but Claire just picked at her plate, not unlike the kids. She had called Lock that morning and said,
I have something to tell you!

He’d said,
Great, what is it?

I’d like to tell you in person.
She waited a beat, two, three. He sounded like he was shuffling papers. Did he get it?

He said,
Can you meet tonight?

As Claire climbed the stairs of the Elijah Baker House, she felt weightless and sick. The symptoms were the same as heatstroke: shallow breathing, hot, dry skin, rocketing heart rate. She was going to pass out. How was she getting one foot in front of the other? She was climbing the stairs to meet with Lock—that was all. The thought that it might be something more was completely inane. Affairs only happened in novels and on TV—but that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Every winter, someone on Nantucket had an affair—the circuit judge, or the high school chemistry teacher, or the woman who gave private piano lessons—and everyone else heard about the gory details: caught in bed with a manager from the Atlantic Café . . . threw her belongings into the front yard. Siobhan was a big fan of the Annual Affair Story. She was the first to castigate the couple—for having an affair, and for getting caught.

Immoral, sneaky, deceptive people,
Siobhan said gleefully.
Stupid! Careless!

What always crossed Claire’s mind was how brave the person must have been, and how unhappy. Claire was not brave (she hadn’t had the courage to suggest a night meeting herself; she had merely willed Lock to do it). And Claire wasn’t unhappy. She loved her kids, she loved Jason, she had Siobhan and a host of other friends, she had full-time help and a newfound zest for her work. She was not unhappy.

And since she was not brave and not unhappy, nothing would happen. She would tell Lock the incredible news about Matthew—it was such big news, it
should
be announced in person—and then she would leave.

The office was so dark that Claire thought it must be uninhabited, and immediately she panicked. Had Lock forgotten? If he had forgotten, she would be wounded, but also relieved. She would slip out of the office and try to forget that anything interesting had ever transpired there. But then she rounded the corner into the office, and there was Lock at his computer, working. The desk lamp was off, as was the radio. There was very little light and no music—and no sandwich, no wine—but Lock was there, at the computer, wearing his glasses. Claire studied him: He was just a person. A balding, slightly overweight middle-aged man with deep eyes and a magnetic smile and (maybe this was the most attractive thing about him) an unquestionable authority.

“Hi,” Claire said.

He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, as though he were having a dream that was too good to believe.

“I saw you coming down the street,” he said.

“Did you?”

“I did. I’ve been watching for you for . . . oh, about five days.”

“Oh,” Claire said. She was tongue-tied and jumbled up. Had he really just said that? Had he meant it? She wanted to say something equally sweet back to him, but it was as if she was holding an instrument she didn’t know how to play. No matter what she said, she would strike the wrong note.

He stood up and she approached the desk. She thought they were taking their places: she would sit in the chair and he would sit on the edge of the desk. But he bypassed the desk and came toward her. She stopped. He stopped. Lock looked at her, and her stomach dropped away—whoosh!—gone. He touched Claire’s cheek, then ran his thumb across her lips. He kissed her.

Ohhhhhhhhhh.

It was so deeply entrenched as a fantasy in Claire’s interior life that she couldn’t believe it was actually happening.

Lock Dixon kissed her only once. Then he pulled away. Claire thought she might fall over backward. She was afraid to move, afraid to speak. She was in a bubble where all that mattered was that Lock had kissed her and might kiss her again.

“Claire,” he said. He spoke her name with wonder and respect, as if it was a beautiful name, as if she was a beautiful woman. Was she a beautiful woman? She hardly ever felt beautiful. She was too harried, too often in her yoga pants, with her wild red hair in a bun. Jason came after her in bed all the time, but did he think she was beautiful? If she asked him, he would laugh and say something patronizing. The part of their marriage that had dissolved was the part where he told her she was beautiful; it was the part where they held hands at dinner or had a drink together in front of the fire. It was the part where, when she said she had something to talk to him about, he turned off the TV instead of merely muting it. The part of their marriage that had dissolved was the breathlessness of moments like this one.

“I don’t know what to say.” This, the truth, from her.

He nodded. “I’m going to kiss you again. Okay?”

She nodded. He kissed her more deeply, for longer, a full second, then two. Her mouth opened. She tasted him. It was heaven. She was twelve years old. This was her first kiss.

It stayed innocent like that: just the kissing. No part of their bodies touched except for their lips, their tongues. It was sweet, and intoxicating. Claire ached for him. Did he ache for her? She had no idea. She knew enough about relationships, though, to pull back first.

“Is this wise?” she said. Now she sounded like the person she knew herself to be. “What if someone finds us up here in the dark?”

“Someone like who?” Lock said. He touched her face again. He held it with both his hands so that her face felt small and delicate, like a child’s face, a doll’s face.

Like Gavin Andrews,
Claire thought.
Or Daphne. Or Jason. Or Adams Fiske.
But she didn’t speak; she was too rapt by Lock’s hands on her face and, in the next second, by his kissing her. They were kissing again. Claire’s mind was a tornado. Why was this happening? Why her, of all people? Had he had feelings for her for a while, or were his feelings newly hatched, like her own feelings? Would this go any further? Lock Dixon had an unquestionable authority, he was a leader, a commander, he knew what he was doing at all times. Claire didn’t have to be brave; he would be brave for both of them. She would be swept up behind him on horseback, and he would gallop them across the fields. And if he knew she was thinking all these preposterous things, he wouldn’t want to be kissing her anymore. At the same time that Claire’s mind was mowing down all her previous convictions and expectations, she was present in the physicality of the moment. She was kissing him, tasting him, feeling the heat of his palms on her face, then in her hair, then against her back. He pressed himself against her, and she took a stutter step backward and he caught her. She pulled away.

“What are we doing?” she said.

“Right,” he said. “I don’t know.”

“Okay,” Claire said, relieved. “Good.”

“Do you want to stop?” he said. He sounded concerned, almost scared. “Am I pressuring you into something you’d rather not be doing?”

“No, no, no . . .”

“I don’t have an explanation,” he said. “I am as stunned as you are. It’s like someone cast a spell on me. From the moment you set foot in here, for the first meeting.”

“The first meeting,” Claire said. “But not . . . before? Not at the lunch? Not two years ago or five years ago? I’ve known you awhile.”

“But not really,” Lock said. “Right?”

“Right,” Claire said. “I thought you hated me.” She remembered his eyes when she showed up at the front door with that basket for Daphne. That horrible look.

“Hated you?”

“Because of Daphne. The night of her accident, I bought her last drink. And then the cab. We asked her to join us, we begged her, but she refused.”

“And you thought I
hated
you?”

“Blamed me, yes. I blame myself.”

“Because you’re that kind of person. A caring person. You would worry. You would blame yourself for something that was, very clearly, not your fault.” Lock loosened his tie. His white shirt was turned back neatly at the cuffs; his watch glinted in the lamplight. “I’ve known for a long time that you’re a good person, good like the rest of us aspire to be. And I’ve admired your work. But then you walked in here and we spent time together and suddenly it dawned on me that I am a lonely man.”

Claire’s mind flickered to the half-eaten turkey and cranberry sandwich on white butcher paper. To the daughter, Heather, at Andover—studying, eating, playing field hockey, and sleeping, all under the supervision of people who were not her parents.

“I have been lonely for so long,” he said, “but I didn’t feel lonely until I spent that hour with you.”

“So I made you feel lonely?”

“You made me feel unlonely. And then you left and I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”

“I had the same problem,” Claire said.

“I am not like this,” he said. “I have not kissed a woman other than my wife in twenty years.”

Really? Was this true? Claire thought of Isabelle French.

“What about Isabelle French?”

“What about her?”

“I saw your wife at the grocery store. She seemed to think there might be something going on between you and Isabelle French.”

“She said that?”

Claire looked at the floor. Now she had the weirdly unpleasant feeling that she’d betrayed Daphne’s confidence. Which felt like a worse offense, somehow, than kissing Lock.

“Yes,” Claire said.

“Daphne doesn’t always realize what she’s saying.”

This was a generous spin on the way things were, but Claire wasn’t going to argue with Lock about Daphne’s state of mind.

“I have no feelings for Isabelle French,” he said. “Other than compassion.”

“Compassion?”

“Bad divorce,” Lock said. “And some subsequent bad decisions.”

“I haven’t met her yet,” Claire said.

“You will.”

“Yes.” This sounded sort of like a discussion about the gala, which was odd because they were standing very close to each other, closer than normal people would stand. Claire was inside Lock’s orbit; she was a captive of his magnetic field.

It’s like someone cast a spell on me.

Was this total bullshit? God knows, it sounded like it. If Jason had heard Lock speak those words, he would have guffawed and choked on his spit. He would have questioned Lock’s sincerity, and possibly his sexual orientation. But that was how Claire felt, too. She had attended the lunch at the yacht club terrified of Lock Dixon, but after the first meeting, she was thinking about him in a whole new way, thinking about him all the time. He’d wooed her, somehow.

And now they were kissing and she didn’t understand it, and he didn’t, either, apparently, and that came as a relief. He was not a brave horseman after all. If it did turn into something more, it would be the two of them, bumbling their way through the dark, which felt like something Claire might be able to handle.

Since they were on the topic of the gala, sort of, Claire decided to bring up the ostensible reason she was here.

“I got Max West,” she said. “He’ll do it for free.”

“I know,” Lock said. “I heard.”

“How?” Claire said. “How do you know?”

“Someone told me.”

“Who?”

“I promised not to reveal my source. It was someone you were at a party with over the weekend.”

So, one of twenty-five people. It was a very small island.

“I thought you’d be shocked. You didn’t think I could do it.”

“Of course I did.”

“So you’re proud of me?”

“I’m proud of you.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead.

“I started sketching the chandelier,” she said.

“That’s great,” he said.

“It is great,” Claire said. “I’ve been wanting to get back into the hot shop. I just needed a push.”

“I’m nothing if not pushy,” he said. He checked his watch. “I should get home.”

Stupidly, this pierced her. Claire had thought he would try to persuade her to stay. Didn’t he want her to stay? Didn’t he want to kiss her some more? She had only been having an affair for twenty minutes, and already she was jealous.