The One in My Heart (14 page)

Rob and Darren chortled. I managed to smile. Our waiter appeared to take our orders, and I used the reprieve to collect myself. Bennett had been
Moira McAllister
’s boy toy—I didn’t know whether I was impressed or even more horrified.

“So.” Rob turned to me once the waiter was gone. “Bennett left Berkeley all of a sudden last year. Was it for you?”

“I’m going to say it was, even though we didn’t meet until several months after he moved to New York.”

“But we could have met years ago if I hadn’t gone out to the West Coast,” said Bennett.

“So you’re making up for lost time?” asked Rob, who was clearly the more talkative in the marriage.

Bennett glanced at me. “Absolutely.”

I shook my head. “He’s with me only for my patents. Look at him: The man was born for gold-digging.”

After the laughter, Darren inquired into those patents. The conversation was briefly about my work before I asked them to tell me more about themselves. Rob was an architect and Darren an accountant—Moira McAllister’s accountant, no less.

“And that’s how we met Bennett,” explained Rob. “One day she had a potluck party. We showed up, and there was Bennett—he’d just moved into her garage apartment. Where did you guys meet, in Spain?”

Bennett nodded. “Yeah, Spain. I was a high school exchange student and Moira knew my host parents. I looked her up when I got to Berkeley.”

Talk about lying by omission.

He was watching me again. I forced myself to not fiddle with my champagne glass. “So what was it like, living with a famous artist?”

“Well, her house was old and stuff was constantly breaking, so I was usually fixing something or other.”

“And he built her editing room, too,” Rob told me with avuncular pride. “Darren and I were so impressed we had him come and build a deck for us.”

I glanced at Bennett. “Are we talking about Mr. Fashionista here?”

“I worked construction for a couple of years to save money for college,” said my fake boyfriend.

“I thought you worked as a stripper to put yourself through college. I thought you were a real American success story. You know, Magic Bennett.”

Rob hooted. One corner of Bennett’s lips quirked, his eyes full of a glossy mischief, all sex and glamour.

I poured the rest of the champagne in my glass down my throat, as if that could quench the unrest inside. Fortunately our appetizers arrived. After we dug in, the conversation turned to other topics—old friends in California, Bennett’s new life in the Big Apple, Rob and Darren’s plan to bike the coastline from San Diego to Portland.

I was every bit the arch but secretly doting girlfriend. Rob and Darren were clearly pleased for Bennett. And from time to time Bennett looked at me with something akin to wonder, as if he couldn’t quite believe how well he’d chosen.

Moira’s name came up only one more time, when Darren mentioned that the Museum of Modern Art would be unveiling a retrospective of her body of work very soon.

Holy shit, Bennett’s naked pictures were going to be in MoMA?

“You plan to go see it?” Rob asked Bennett.

“At some point,” said Bennett. “Want to come with, Professor?”

I shot him a look. “I wouldn’t miss it.”

At the end of the evening we said our good nights with many hugs and smiles. But my smile dissipated the moment Bennett and I went our own way, the implications of everything I’d learned at dinner whirling about in my head like a storm of crows.

My silence failed to register on me until we were in the suite—I’d been standing before the mantel, turning a small box of complimentary chocolate around and around. And I couldn’t be sure how long I’d been at it.

“Nobody knew even after you came of age?” I hoped my tone conveyed curiosity and not…anything else.

“My dad threatened a scandal that would end Moira’s career if our relationship ever became public.”

I fiddled with the lid of the chocolate box. “Could he have done that?”

Bennett braced a hand on the far end of the mantel. “Destroy her career? I’m not sure. Make things extremely unpleasant for her? Absolutely. And she was at a fragile point. The photographs that had made her name had been taken decades earlier. Her new works weren’t resonating as well—or bringing in as much income. She was about to turn her hand to filmmaking, a much more expensive medium—and a scandal was the last thing she needed.”

“Let me guess: This became a bone of contention between you two. You wanted to shout your love from the rooftops, but she was afraid of the repercussions.”

He looked up at the canvas above the mantel, a nostalgic photograph of the Amalfi Coast in the sixties. “It was the other way around: She didn’t want to keep things quiet anymore, and I was hesitant to test my dad.”

“This wasn’t
the
reason you guys broke up, was it?” I thought of his multiple attempts to take over the family firm. Now his actions made more sense—he was angry at the restriction the old man had put on how he could live his life.

He shook his head. “That particular disagreement was at most the creaky stairs in a house slowly sliding off its foundation. But it got more notice because it was right underfoot.”

I took a deep breath. “If you don’t mind my asking, what
was
the reason the house was sliding off its foundation?”

He studied the couple in the image above us, standing on a balcony of the hotel, the man in a suit that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a Beatle, the woman sleek and mod in her miniskirt. “Moira was a true rebel, but I was just a punk. And once I got the teenage rebellion out of my system, it turned out that I had a lot more in common with my parents than I could have guessed.”

“Your parents are responsible, productive members of society. Hardly a demerit to be like them.”

He shrugged. “Moira felt differently. And feelings are what they are.”

I blinked. “Do you mean to tell me that
she
dumped
you
?”

“It was a mutual parting, but more mutual on her part than on mine.”

I needed a moment to understand what he was saying. “You would have stayed and worked on the relationship?”

He was still looking up at the young couple from half a century ago. Was he remembering the heyday of his own romance? Was he seeing it through lenses tinted with just as much nostalgia? “Yes, I would.”

The magnetic closure on the chocolate box snapped to with a click that reverberated in the stillness of the room. “And not just to prove your parents wrong?”

He looked at me, his gaze unwavering. “No.”

Each sentence he spoke about Moira emerged as a straightforward, unequivocal declarative. Every word he had ever said about us, on the other hand, was like the fog that still lingered thickly outside: something that couldn’t be pinned down.

Something without substance.

I opened the chocolate box again and took out a piece. “Okay, good night.”

As I passed him, he caught my wrist. My heartbeat accelerated at once. But he only said, “Are you all right?”

I put on my most guileless expression. “Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?”

His thumb slid down, drawing a line of warmth into the center of my palm. Then he let go of me. “Good night, then. And sweet dreams.”

AS SOON AS I WAS
alone in my room I Googled Moira McAllister, starting with her pages on IMDB and Wikipedia, then clicking through to the reference articles one by one. Some of the articles were from the archives of major outlets like the
New York Times
,
Vanity Fair
, and
Vogue
, others scans from magazines that had folded decades ago.

One thing was clear: Moira McAllister had indeed been hot. Not a classic beauty, but an unforgettable one, reminiscent of a young Anjelica Huston, all dark, brooding eyes and granitelike cheekbones.

And despite a sometimes uneven career, she had been an enormously accomplished woman, winning awards for her photography since she was a teenager, and racking up accolades for her short films even after her death.

Bennett’s cradle-robbing ex had been a bit of a caricature in my mind, but now she was all too real, a woman who had lived and died, who had laughed in front of the camera and commanded a crew behind.

A woman who was in every way my antithesis. I had but to sit down at a table with his parents for them to understand that he had brought the un-Moira: No need to worry about Bohemian passions that flouted conventions, no worldview dramatically different from their own. I was safe and familiar; I was Bennett saying, without ever having to use those words, that he was ready to return to the fold.

I was, in fact, the very girl they had chosen for him almost a decade and a half ago, when they still hoped he wouldn’t desert the fold in the first place.

All this I’d known the moment Zelda first told me about the Somersets’ role in securing my invitation to the Bal des Debutantes. But now I understood in my marrow that I wasn’t merely a facilitator in Bennett’s quest; I was the very symbol of it.

I wished he were using me for my body instead. At least lust was visceral and sometimes specific. This, the reduction of all that I was into a quick shorthand for conventional respectability, lay upon me, a welt across my heart.

Chapter 8

I WOKE UP WHEN IT
was still dark outside. As soon as I’d texted Zelda—she’d see my hello when she woke up—I Googled Moira McAllister again, this time searching for anything that included both her and Bennett. Google didn’t autocomplete my search, but it did unearth an image of an outdoor meal on a picnic table, some dozen or so people on two benches, with Moira near one end of the table, Rob and Darren at the other end, Bennett standing next to them, everyone smiling at the camera.

It could have been the potluck get-together at which Rob and Darren first met Bennett—or it might have been a different party. But Bennett was young, eighteen or nineteen, a gorgeous, gorgeous boy in a white T-shirt, ripped jeans, and a pair of Vans.

I stared at him for a long time before I realized this must be around the time we almost met—if he had bothered to come to the Bal des Debutantes. Not that he’d have found anything in me to hold his attention then—he was clearly drawn to the sex and drama of a woman who had experienced the full spectrum of life, and I was but a young girl completely wrapped up in the state of her stepmother’s mental health.

I hadn’t changed much in the years since. I used to go to school and come back home right away. Now I went to work and came back home right away.

And my life had all the sex and drama of a filing session at a county registrar’s office.

A WINTER STORM SHOULD SWEEP
across the Amalfi Coast. Instead the sun rose in a bright, clear sky, and Bennett somehow managed to convince me that we should head out and see Capri.

We were on the ferry, not far from the island, when he set a hand on my shoulder. “You all right?”

“Yeah. Just enjoying the scenery,” I said mechanically.

Although one
could
easily be rendered speechless by the sight of Capri: white sea cliffs rearing from cobalt blue waters, houses and roads clinging to dizzy slopes, and a lemon-bright light that had probably dazzled generations of artists.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Bennett said softly.

Our ferry disgorged us at the Marina Grande. We rode the cable railcar up to the town of Capri and from there set out on foot toward the ruins of Villa Jovis, the retreat once beloved by Roman emperor Tiberius.

The street that led out from the center of the town was barely wider than a table runner. I stopped by a café and browsed the postcards for sale on a spinning rack. While I made my selections, Bennett ducked into a tiny shop across the lane and emerged with a bag of groceries. As I tucked my purchases into my purse, he offered me a handful of dried figs.

The way he peered at me, half-curious, half-concerned, made me realize that it had again been a while since I’d said anything other than, “Sure, we can go that way,” or, “Do you mind if I have a look at the postcards?”

I took the figs and searched for something to say, something so banal it would be a waste of breath.
Nice weather. Beautiful place. Do you know what time is it?

“What happened after you and Moira broke up?”

What was wrong with me? I used to be able to say all the right things.

Bennett shrugged. “I got smashed and then went out and got laid…or was it the other way around? You know, stuff everybody does—except you, I guess.”

How did he do this? How did he turn the topic back to me—and always manage to catch me flat-footed? “Why do you presume I don’t?”

“
Do
you?”

His voice held a hint of incredulity. And he was right; I never had. The ends of my affairs were always a relief, a return to equilibrium.

Or what passed for equilibrium for me.

I bit into a fig and wished I hadn’t retorted. “Never mind me. So you do know how to get laid.”

His eyes were on me again. Did he notice how ungainly my conversational pivot had been? How could he not?