Off Season (29 page)

Jill opened the desktop and pulled a few bills from a pigeonhole compartment. She sorted through them as if she intended to sit right down and pay them, as if the drama being played out on her front steps did not presently exist. “It wasn’t her husband who died,” she said, her eyes on the envelopes, “it was her father-in-law.”

Amy nodded and at last moved from the window and picked up the tray again. “Well, she dresses like a Forty-second Street whore.”

Jill turned to her daughter. “Where on earth did you hear that expression?”

Just then an engine started. Jill spun back to the window and watched a pickup truck pull away, and saw Ben …

He opened the front door and came into the foyer. If “ashen” truly was a color, he’d become it. Maybe Rita had been right. Maybe he was sick, and he was going to die right there in the doorway, not unlike the way her father had dropped dead one sunny summer morning without warning, without reason.

Like all of life, she thought
.

“Hey, Ben,” Amy said, “that’s some woman. A friend of yours?” She laughed a playful, teasing laugh.

Ben did not laugh back. “No one who matters,” he replied, and his gaze told Jill that Fern Ashenbach’s visit did matter quite a lot.

“I’m glad you’re both here,” Amy continued. “I was thinking tonight at the party that I really love it on the island. I love all the people here. If Charlie decides to stay in Florida and wants to sell the tavern, I really want to buy it. Wouldn’t it be fun to have it come back into the family, Mom? I mean, college is not for everyone.”

“Charlie’s not gone for good yet,” Ben commented, his voice still flat. He removed his cap and did not seem to notice that snow fell to the floor.

“Well, Rita thinks—”

“We’ll talk about it later, okay?” Jill asked, her eyes still on her husband, doubt emblazoned on her face.

Amy looked from Jill to Ben, then back again. “Maybe I should come back another time,” she said.

“Yes, honey,” Jill replied, “that’s a good idea.”

“Some nights I lie awake and think that even after April has come and gone, this nightmare will never end,” Jill said after Amy had gone and Ben had settled in the kitchen with a large mug of steaming coffee that he’d made in order to kill time so he could figure out how to tell his wife the things he had to say.

He wished he could simply say “I love you” and know that that would be enough.

“But the nightmare is far from over,” his wife continued, “isn’t it?”

If Ben still took sugar in his coffee he’d use this time to stir it slowly. He looked down onto the rich, dark liquid and was reminded of the story he’d heard of the scamming fortune teller who claimed to have ESP. A woman in a purple velvet turban had her client write his deepest secret on a small square of napkin. The fortune teller then took the napkin, passing it across the top of her cup of coffee, where her client didn’t realize she could see his words clearly reflected in the liquid. She then revealed his
deepest secret and—presto!—she’d found a new believer at fifty bucks a pop.

He stared into his cup now and wondered if a fortune lay there and, if so, could it save him now.

“Ben?”

He sighed. Because he could not stir his coffee, he put his hands onto his lap. “No,” he said. “It’s far from over.”

Out in the hall, the grandfather’s clock ticked, a symbol of all things sound and good, or at least dependable.

All things that he had always strived to be but now was not.

Jill attempted a laugh. “I actually had some hope that Fern Ashenbach had come to say Mindy changed her mind. That she said it was all a lie and that the charges would be dropped.”

Ben stared back into his coffee. “I don’t expect that’s going to happen.”

“But she’s Mindy’s mother! How can a mother allow her daughter to go through with this charade?”

“She doesn’t think it’s a charade, Jill.” He could not tell his wife that this was the ticket Fern had been waiting for all her life. He could not tell Jill that Fern had just asked Ben for half a million dollars to get Mindy to “change her mind.”

If he gave her the money, the Commonwealth could not prosecute: he’d be free.

Except that Fern would get away with blackmail.

And he didn’t have half a million dollars.

“Ben?” Jill asked.

“She’s not dropping the charge,” he replied. He did not add that at least the gag order was on his side: if she tried to sell her story to the tabloids, she would go to jail. He’d warned her about that, not because he cared if she was incarcerated, but because he didn’t want his face and Jill’s at every checkout counter in the country.

The clock ticked again. And again.

He stood up and dragged his heavy body across the floor. He stared out the back door into the darkness, past the porch, out to the silhouette of the Chappaquiddick ferry that had seen its share of scandal, that was docked now, snow-covered on the pier, waiting for the next passengers who might not come tonight. He thought of Jill’s career and wondered what would happen if
—when
—all the details leaked out.

“Maybe she wants money,” Jill said. “Maybe we should pay her off.”

He reminded himself that, unlike Fern, his wife was blessed with brains. She’d probably taken one look at Fern and known the woman’s agenda. Well, part of it anyway.

“We can’t do that, Jill. We’re cash poor. Between restoring this house, building the museum and the studio, and putting up money for Sea Grove—most of yours is gone and all of mine.”

“The money from
Good Night, USA
 …”

Ben turned back to her. “Honey,” he said slowly, “that’s yours.” He lowered his voice. “And Bartlett’s too, I guess.”

“I think they want me full time, Ben. I could agree to do the show for a year.”

Heat rose in his cheeks. “No!” he said. “If you’re away from me for a year, I might as well be in jail.”

“I’ll only be in New York. I could come home on weekends.”

They were silent a moment.

“No,” he said. “If we pay Fern, it will be blackmail. I won’t let her get away with it.” He went back to the table and sat down.

“If it meant you’d be free, I don’t care what you call it.”

The steam had left his coffee, the heat had left his
veins. “Don’t you get it, Jill? Even if we had the money, even if we paid her off, I would not be vindicated. You’d never know the truth.”

“I’d know the truth,” she whispered. “I’ve known it all along.”

He sighed heavily. “Jill,” he said, “there’s something you don’t know.”

He tried to force himself to look at her so she would see the truth that surely might show up somewhere in his eyes. “Fern is Mindy’s mother,” he said.

Jill scowled. “I know that.”

“But what you don’t know is that six or seven years ago,” he continued, aching inside, “when Louise was really sick, I did a very dumb thing.”

Keeping his eyes on Jill’s was perhaps the hardest thing he’d ever done, yet for some reason, Ben felt compelled to do it. “I met Fern when I first scouted out the land to build Menemsha House. She was living with Ashenbach and her drunken husband.”

Jill still said nothing, and he willed himself onward.

“We had an affair,” he said. “Louise was sick and dying, and I committed adultery. I had sex with Fern Ashenbach. Not once, but many times.”

Looking out her window, Mindy thought about Santa Claus. As soon as the little kids on the island saw snow on the ground, they’d be convinced that he would come to the Vineyard, that he’d drive his sleigh, and presents would show up beneath their shiny Christmas trees, Barbies and jewelry kits and CDs of Ricky Martin and the Backstreet Boys.

Which, of course, was stupid.

“Put a white beard on Ben Niles this year,” her mother said last night. “He’s going to fund our future, as long as you don’t rock the goddamn boat.”

She’d said that at least a hundred times since Grandpa had dropped dead, but most times she’d been drunk, so Mindy wasn’t sure how much it counted.

And the picture of Ben in a white beard seemed no more real than the guys who stood on street corners, ringing their small red bells.

Besides, there wasn’t any Santa Claus, never had been, never would be.

She sat on her bed and hugged herself because there was no one else to hug, and she wished that she believed, wished that she’d ever, just once, believed.

•   •   •

It was the dawn of Christmas Eve. A veil of snow was draped over the Gay Head cliffs; the air was still and calm, pausing, waiting, as if needing reassurance that all was well, the storm had passed.

But the storm inside Ben had not passed. So he’d driven there, because he had nowhere else to go.

He’d driven out long before dawn, when he’d known there would be no sleep for him that night. And now he sat within shouting distance of the rust-colored brick lighthouse where only months before he and Jill had married, where he’d vowed for the second time in his life to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health.

He had not kept his vows with Louise. He had loved her, but he had not honored her in sickness. He had cheated on her with a woman who was two decades younger and half as smart.

From deep inside his guilt, Ben had wanted to tell Louise, had wanted to absolve himself of his lustful crime.

“No.” His friend Noepe had been adamant, right there upon the cliffs, so very long ago. “You are not a selfish man, Ben Niles. Do not be selfish now.”

Ben pulled his plaid wool jacket tighter now, against the shiver of the wind that crept up off the water. On the horizon, light was breaking, the pale light of December’s end, a silver wash that hinted of a cloudy sky, perhaps another touch of snow.

How he wished that Noepe were there, seated cross-legged atop the cliff, his long white ponytail caught in the breeze, his bronze skin burnished by the sun of many summers, the winds of many winters. His wizened eyes, Ben knew, would have been closed in silent prayer. Noepe was a tribal medicine man—a Wampanoag descendant who kept peace and kept tradition, and most likely kept his vows.

Not like Ben.

“Do not ask your wife’s forgiveness,” Noepe had said when, after three weeks of screwing Fern Ashenbach, Ben broke down and confessed his sin to his nonjudgmental friend. “Ask for forgiveness of yourself. You are the only one who can do that, Ben. But do not trouble your poor wife. She is in pain enough.”

It had been long and difficult, but finally Ben had done it. He had explained—not excused—his behavior to himself as coming from the need to feel like a man again, an uncontrollable hormonal thrust from nursing his sick wife for so long (had it been a year? two?) and not having been able to love her fully, physically, in the way God had intended.

It was an explanation, however thin.

In time he had forgiven himself. He thought he’d also forgotten.

“Perhaps it’s why you were so kind to Mindy,” he could almost hear Noepe say, his words a whisper in the air. “Perhaps you felt her mother deserted both of you.”

The raw air cut across his face now. A seagull’s wail pierced the metallic sky.

Noepe would, of course, have been right. Because though it had been Ben who’d called it off, it had been Fern who’d up and gone, who’d abandoned her child and left him, too.

At the time, he’d been relieved.

Without Fern around, there was no concrete reminder of his deed. Without Fern around, he did not have to face the fact he had stooped to a loveless sexual relationship with a woman he would not want to be seen on the street with, a woman he had used.

She’d used him, too, or at least Noepe had suggested that.

“Her husband is a drunkard,” his friend had said. “What kind of life do you believe she’d had with him?”

She had been the aggressor, the one who’d come on strong to Ben. Yet he had known the word
no
. He’d simply failed to use it, and he felt the blame was his own.

And now he could only sit on the cold, damp cliffs and picture the look on Jill’s face yesterday, silently asking:

“How many more surprises, Ben? How much more will I be expected to understand?”

It was snowing again, and it was getting as icy as it was wet.

Despite the weather, Jill marched through the center of town as if she had a purpose, which she did not. Unless, of course, making a decision about whether to end your marriage could be considered purposeful.

Along the narrow streets, close to the snow-covered walks, the tall white houses stood, black-shuttered like her own house, where she’d been raised.

She walked another block or two, then turned right onto Main.

Shops lined both sides of the street. Some had closed for the season, and some were still open, though stock was sure to be limited to last-minute Christmas gift selections and stocking-stuffer items.

This was the first year she’d not made stockings for the kids. With Jeff in England, it seemed no longer to make sense. He’d not wanted to come home for the holidays, and as each week passed, Jill feared that soon he would consider England his home. England was where his father lived, good, bad, or in between. England was where the once-shy boy had made many friends—including Mick Daley, his roommate and best friend—none of whom cared that Jeff’s mother was “who she was” because over there, no one knew her.