Off Season (21 page)

Rita hung up the phone and looked across the living room at her mother, who was sitting in the chair, making the third pair of booties for the baby yet to be born. “Don’t ask me how I know what I know, but something’s wrong with Jill. And it’s something big, or she’d tell me what.”

Mindy had no idea why she’d done it, why she’d screamed.

“I don’t know,” she said to Dr. Laura when the woman arrived with an apple pie to go with Thanksgiving dinner as if they would have one.

“Were you afraid he would touch you again?”

She looked at the pie that sat on the counter. It was all puffed up and golden and must have been baked at the Black Dog Bakery or at the Mayfield House, where Dr. Reynolds was living. She wanted to ask if Laura was spending Thanksgiving with her boyfriend if she had one, or if she, too, would be alone. Instead she said, “I was surprised he was there.”

“And afraid?” the doctor asked again.

Mindy shrugged, because although she supposed yes would have been the right answer, it no longer felt good to say bad things about Ben. He’d looked so sad last night. And she knew that it was her fault.

Ben slept until ten, because sleeping late had become easier than getting up to do nothing. He opened his eyes and listened to the hollowness of the house.

Lying on the huge four-poster bed that had belonged to Jill’s grandparents, he stared up at the canopy, the “lace ceiling,” he called it, with silliness that always made Jill laugh, back when she still cared, back when she had been there on her side of the bed.

The hollowness seemed worse because it was Thanksgiving, because this wonderful old house should be filled with the aromas of turkey and pumpkin pie and laughter today, not only with air breathed in and out by a solitary man.

Maybe he should get drunk. There might be enough single-malt scotch in the cabinet downstairs. No one would know. Everyone on the island would be busy with their own families today, their own friends, or, in his wife’s case, with whomever they could find.

Then again, he admitted, when she’d said she was going to the church with Amy, he had agreed. She’d asked him to go, then seemed relieved he’d said no. He told her that
if he felt like giving thanks this year, he wouldn’t be certain for what.

She responded by saying he might be grateful there had been no fallout from him trying to confront Mindy, right there in public.

He rolled onto his side and stared out the window. It was not a pretty day. The wind had kicked up and the branches of that oak he’d meant to prune were brushing against the window, scratching at the glass like a dog trying to get in.

If they had a dog, he wouldn’t be alone today.

He was trying to decide whether to get out of bed now or ever again—when the telephone rang out in the hall. If they had a cordless phone upstairs, he wouldn’t have to get out of bed. But they didn’t have a cordless any more than they had a dog.

The answering machine didn’t kick in: Jill must have disconnected it in her quest for privacy. He lay there for a second, thinking it could be Jill checking to see that he was okay; or Carol Ann wanting to say Happy Thanksgiving. Whoever was calling let it ring the full seven rings it took Ben to haul himself from the bed and go out to the hall.

The whoever was not Jill, and it was not Carol Ann. It was a voice he recognized from TV years ago.

“Niles?” the caller asked. “This is Christopher. Edwards.” He said his name in two parts, as if the first part wouldn’t mean anything without the second. As if Ben would know anyone else named Christopher with a polished, celebrity voice.

“My wife isn’t home,” Ben replied.

There was a loud, guffawing chuckle that Ben might have thought was caused by nerves if it had come from anyone else. “I wanted to let her know her accommodations are set for a week from Sunday.”

Ben wanted to ask if he’d become one of Addie
Becker’s lackeys or if there was some other reason he and not Addie was calling. And it was Thanksgiving, for God’s sake, not the middle of a workday in the middle of the week. He might have challenged the jerk’s motives, but he was really too tired now and didn’t much give a shit. “Anything else?” he asked.

“Well, no,” Edwards concluded. “I just wanted to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. Amy and Jeff included.”

Mind your own damn business
, Ben wanted to shout. Instead, he said, “Yeah, sure, you too.”

He did not remember saying good-bye, but he did remember that he hung up, then removed the receiver from the hook, in case anyone else decided to call. Then went back to bed without the single-malt scotch because it was downstairs and that was too far to walk.

Jill went to Manhattan on Friday and spent three days shopping because her wardrobe needed updating and most of the good shops on the Vineyard were closed for the season. That was, of course, the excuse she’d given Ben. The greater reason was that she wanted to escape his depression, his deepening dark mood.

Maybe all that would change once she’d secured a good lawyer. As long as he didn’t divorce her for doing it behind his back.

By Sunday evening, she was exhausted from walking and thinking and spending too much money, as if she still had it to spend.

She stepped from the shower and wrapped herself in the thick white terry robe with the Plaza logo on the pocket. Towel-drying her hair, she went into the bedroom of the suite just as there was a knock on the door—room service, no doubt, with the light supper she’d ordered.

It was not room service. It was Christopher.

She sucked in a small breath and clutched her robe tightly closed.

He smiled that tawny, tanned, straight-white-teeth smile. “You came early,” he said.

“To shop,” she replied.

“Did you find any bargains?”

“No. But I bought some nice things.”

“Christmas gifts?”

“Not yet.”

He nodded. “Are you going to make me stand in the doorway?”

“Oh,” she said, and quickly stepped back as he moved into the living room, as he walked past her with his full six feet of height and his former athlete’s firm body dressed in a buttersuede jacket and sleek light wool pants, not the jeans and flannel shirt of Vineyard men. For a moment, his aura enveloped her; for a moment, she became light-headed.

Ben
, she forced herself to remember.

“Addie’s not arriving until tomorrow,” he said, walking to the window and looking down on Fifth Avenue. “In the meantime, how about dinner uptown?”

It was as if he had stepped not only into the room but back into her life, right where he’d left off, right back in control.

“I’m sorry, but I’ve ordered room service.”

He turned back to her and smiled. “Cancel it. The truth is, I wanted you here a day early so we could spend some time alone. There are things we need to discuss.”

Jill felt a little bit duped and a little bit angry, because she could not imagine that Christopher had anything to “discuss” that necessitated her being here a day before Addie, anything that required them to spend “some time alone.” But he’d been insistent, and he was, well, difficult to turn down.

So she’d shooed him away and canceled her supper.
Then she’d called Ben to tell him good night, to say she was going out to meet Addie for dinner, hoping that the lie would not catch up with her.

Then she dressed, first in an outfit she’d brought from home, a three-year-old St. John knit. But when she’d stood in the mirror, she looked too much like the old Jill, so she’d discarded it for a new dress she’d bought yesterday at Escada: a beige cashmere sheath that stopped just above her ankles and had a slit on one side clear up past her knee. New Bally heels and a long tiger pin made her feel like New York, made her feel like today.

Maybe she’d gone a little too far, she thought now, as she sat across from Christopher at a small linen-covered table in a tiny French restaurant on the Upper East Side, and was uncomfortably aware that he could not stop staring at her—the woman who’d once been his fiancée.

“I guess I thought you’d look different,” he said over a balloon-shaped wine goblet. He had on a pale blue sweater, the color of his eyes, and a navy blazer from Armani or someone equally chic.

“How?” she asked. “Old? Dowdy?”

He laughed. “Maybe with no makeup and soil beneath your fingernails and wearing a yellow slicker that smelled a little like low tide.”

She laughed. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

He sipped his cabernet sauvignon, then set down the glass. “Remember that day we trucked Maurice Fischer all over the island in the pouring rain? God, he loved it. He even loved those yellow slickers. We were bored stiff.”

Jill had been bored—he was right about that. But that was before … “Well,” she said, “yellow never was your color.” She did not add that today she would not have been bored, because, until recently, she’d begun to see the island in a whole different light, a whole loving light. She raised her own glass to help ward off the guilt she now
felt for having dressed up purposefully to look good for Christopher.

“We need to talk about the future,” he said so abruptly it took Jill off guard.

“February,” she replied.

“And more if you like.”

She took a deep drink. A waiter arrived with their pâté de canard.

“Lizette is leaving the show,” he said after the waiter was out of earshot.

“But the ratings are good.”

“Have you seen the book?”

“No. But I can tell by your advertisers—”

“Well, you might not believe this, but for once Maurice is not worried about the ratings. He wants Lizette out. She’s been doing cocaine.”

Jill suppressed a sigh, a big, deep sigh. She had only wanted to find a lawyer for her husband. She had only wanted to come to New York early to escape the gloom at home. She had only wanted to dress up tonight to show Christopher she had not “lost” anything. She had not expected this news, or the whirlwind of emotions it set off in her mind.

And yes, her ego had told her that it was nice that he was looking at her, wanting her. But now to learn that what he really wanted was only a co-anchor …

She felt like a fool. “Christopher,” she said, “I have a home and a husband. I have a business. I have no intention of relocating to the West Coast, or of forming a permanent career on
Good Night, USA
. I made that decision three years ago, and it has not changed.”

“The show is moving to New York.”

She tried to keep her surprise from showing on her face.

“We’ll finish out December in L.A. with Lizette as best we can. January will be a hiatus—they’ll build the new set then. When we return in February, it will be in the Big
Apple, and you will be beside me. It’s the way I want it, Jill. It’s how Maurice wants it.”

“I just told you, I will not form a permanent career on
Good Night, USA.
”

He leaned back in his chair. “Even if your husband goes to prison for child molestation?”

Jill did not remember getting up and leaving the restaurant. She did remember stumbling in her heels out onto the sidewalk. She did remember that it had started to rain, no, sleet. That it was cold. That she stood shivering until he hailed a cab. She did not want to go back indoors, where people might see her cry.

The next thing she remembered was Christopher helping her off with her dress, wrapping the Plaza robe around her, leaning down and kissing the hollow at her collarbone just below her shoulder.

Then he half-carried her out to the living room of her suite, where he set her down. He sat down next to her, where he cradled her face and her back as she cried.

If he’d had an erection, she would have let it slide into her. She would have done just about anything right then to feel warm and secure, safe and protected. But if he wanted sex, he did not let it show.

“How did you find out?” she asked when the numbness had faded enough that she was able to speak.

He stroked her hair. “Hugh Talbot, the Gay Head sheriff. He’s always been a huge baseball fan—and a fan of mine, I guess. I hate to admit it, but Hugh has helped me keep track of your life these past few years.” He chuckled a little. “I guess I wanted to be sure I knew if your life fell apart. If you would ever be ready to return to the real world.”

“Oh, God,” she moaned. It was a few minutes before
she could speak again. “How long?” she asked. “How long have you known?”

“From the day your husband was arrested. Actually, before he was arrested. Hugh called me right after Ashenbach left the station.”

“Addie called me the same night,” Jill said, trying to sort out the pieces.

“I saw my chance to get you back. I got on the phone with Maurice and told him about Lizette. I knew he’d freak. Did you know he had a son who died of a cocaine overdose?”

Jill shook her head as if she cared about Maurice Fischer or his dead son right then.

“Well, then I talked to Addie. She took care of the rest.”

She closed her eyes and asked a question she did not want to ask. “Does … does Addie know about Ben?”

“No.”

For that, Jill was grateful.