The Love Season Part 17

They moved into the living room, which was decorated in seventeen shades of white. Suzanne asked what he was drinking.

"Scotch," he said. "Straight up."

"You and my husband will get along just fine," Suzanne said. She did not make the drink herself but called a young black woman in from the deck and asked her to make it. "Mr. Knox would like a scotch straight up."

The woman nodded. Daniel grew warm around the neck. He hated to see people accept orders on his behalf.

"And how is dinner coming along?" Suzanne asked.

"All set, ma'am."

"Okay, then, please bring Mr. Knox's drink out to the deck. Cade? Claire? We're ready to sit."

"Yes, Mother," Cade said.

They moved out to the deck. It was a stunning evening, warm but breezy, with a black velvet sky and a clear crescent moon. And to be on the water like this, with Nantucket Sound spread out before them like a kingdom-well, overdone house aside, Daniel Knox was impressed. He introduced himself to the father, Joe Driscoll, who did not stand to shake hands but merely nodded and said jovially, "So glad you could join us!" His hands were clasped in his lap, one hand was rattling around like a Mexican jumping bean, and it was then Daniel remembered that Renata had mentioned that Joe Driscoll was sick. Parkinson's. Daniel bowed to him.

"Thank you for having me."

Next, Daniel met the elder Robinsons, Kent and Kathy.

"We hear you used to own the Beach Club," Kathy said.

"Years ago."

"We've been languishing on the wait-list for what seems like forever," Kathy said.

"Same here," Joe Driscoll said. "It's quite the exclusive place."

"We belong to every club on the island," Kent Robinson said. "Except for that one. So naturally that's the only one my wife cares about."

"Mmmmm," Daniel said. They were talking like he was somehow responsible for their exclusion from the club. "I don't have a thing to do with it anymore. I sold it in '92, the year my wife died."

The group nodded mutely, Joe Driscoll tipped back the ice in his drink with his good hand and they all listened to the clink of it in his gla.s.s. Suzanne came out, waving her wine. "Okay, everybody sit! Kathy, you're next to Daniel, and Kent, you come over by me. Claire, you're right there, and Cade-"

Daniel watched the Robinsons sit. Joe Driscoll stayed where he was, turning in his chair and raising an arm with his empty gla.s.s toward the young black woman, who whisked it away to be refilled. Claire sat, and Suzanne. Only Daniel and Cade remained standing, presumably wondering the same thing. The table was laden with a feast: A shallow bowl at each place held a two-pound lobster; there was a platter with twenty ears of steamed corn, an enormous bowl of green salad, Parker House rolls. But there was no Renata.

Daniel shot Cade a questioning look. Cade said, "She went upstairs to put some aloe on her face. She got quite a sunburn at the beach today."

"Who?" Suzanne said.

"Renata."

Suzanne glanced around the table as if double-checking each person's ident.i.ty. "My word," she said. "Renata!"

"She's upstairs?" Daniel said.

"She wanted to fix her face," Cade said. "But that was a while ago. Maybe she fell asleep."

Claire coughed into her napkin.

"I'll go get her," Cade said.

"I'll go get her," Daniel said. "If she's hiding from anyone, it's me."

"Hiding?" Suzanne said. "Don't be ridiculous. You both sit. Nicole will go up and get Renata, won't you, Nicole?"

"Certainly," Nicole said.

"Wonderful," Suzanne said. "Thank you. The rest of us should start before everything gets cold." She lifted her winegla.s.s and waited with a pointed gaze until Daniel and Cade took their places. "Cheers, everyone!"

Nicole trudged up the back stairs. She felt cranky and venomous, like a snake ready to strike. She had worked nearly fourteen hours today, she had not had a moment to take her dinner break, and she was pretty certain that, despite all the beautiful promises he had made in order to lure her to Nantucket from South Africa, Miles was leaving her. It would be unfair to say this was all Renata's fault. Things between Nicole and Miles had been strained all summer-he constantly asked her to take his shifts so he could hang out at the Chicken Box or go to the beach with the lesbian surfer girl. Since one of them was responsible round-the-clock for meeting Suzanne Driscoll's needs and desires, there was no time to be alone together, no time for s.e.x except the wee hours (when, quite frankly, Nicole was too tired), no time to enjoy each other's company or even plan their winter escape-a three-month kayaking trip to Irian Jaya. No, it wasn't Renata's fault, though Nicole suspected they had slept together. Nicole heard it in Miles's voice that afternoon when he'd called to say he wasn't coming back. Miles had wanted Nicole to pack his stuff up and leave it hidden in the bushes at the end of the driveway; he wanted Nicole to tell Suzanne he was quitting. Nicole was incredulous. I am not going to do your dirty work. Come pack your things yourself. Come tell Suzanne to her face, like a man. But he claimed he couldn't-he told her the whole sob story about the lesbian surfer girl hit in the head with her board, nearly drowned, and then he confessed that the real reason he couldn't return to Vitamin Sea was because of a bad judgment call he'd made in regard to Renata. He'd kidnapped her for the afternoon; he'd convinced her to skip lunch with the madame. And you know what Suzanne will think, he'd said. Oh yes. It was what Nicole thought herself, it was what Cade thought, it was what everyone thought when they heard that Miles and Renata had slipped away together for the afternoon. Bad judgment indeed. Nicole had hung up on him, midsentence. She would never again trust an American.

Nicole knocked on the guest room door with authority, as though she were a dormitory proctor, or the police. "Renata?" she said. "Please open up, Renata. I'm afraid your absence has been detected downstairs." She knocked again, with such force the door rattled in its frame. Renata had had...three wine spritzers? She was probably pa.s.sed out facedown, drooling all over the linens. Nicole knocked once more for propriety's sake, then opened the door. Simply telling Suzanne that Renata wasn't answering wouldn't be good enough; Suzanne liked tasks completed.

Nicole was no detective, but she was able to put two and two together and draw a conclusion in a matter of seconds-the room was empty; the duffel bag that, only that morning, looked as though it had exploded everywhere was gone; the much-celebrated engagement ring sparkled on top of the dresser. On the floor lay Miles's shirt, his white polo with the small rip in the collar. Nicole picked it up. Sure enough. The little b.i.t.c.h, Nicole thought. Gone with Miles. Nicole hissed with anger. What a day. The worst of her life.

8:50 P.M.

They didn't sit down to their proper dinner until nearly nine o'clock, and by that time they had emptied both bottles of champagne. Marguerite suggested a trip to the bas.e.m.e.nt for a third bottle, and Renata, because she was younger and more sure-footed, led the way down the stairs. The bas.e.m.e.nt wasn't as scary as she imagined. There was a washer and dryer, a folded-up card table, a basic box of tools, and a wall rack that must have held five hundred bottles of wine.

"My secret cache," Marguerite said. "What I took from the restaurant when it closed."

"Geez," Renata said. Marguerite slid a bottle of 1990 Pommery off the shelves, and they went back upstairs.

They decided to be brave and eat in the dining room, where the table was set and waiting. Marguerite pulled all the shutters on the front of the house closed and yanked the curtains firmly across.

"No one can see in," she said.

Renata settled into a chair while Marguerite served pieces of rosy tenderloin ladled with bearnaise, crispy asparagus, and slabs of homemade bread served with the b.u.t.ter from Ethan's farm. Marguerite filled their flutes to the top and set the bottle of Pommery in the wine cooler. She eased herself down across from Renata and raised her gla.s.s. Derek and the Dominos played in the background. Yes: This was what Marguerite had been dreaming of when she woke up this morning.

"Salud," she said.

Their flutes clinked like a tiny bell. The clock struck nine.

"I feel so at home here," Renata said. "Nothing at all like I felt on Hulbert Avenue. I feel so peculiarly at home."

"I'm glad," Marguerite said.

"Will you tell me about my mother?"

"Yes," Marguerite said.

"I don't have anyone else to ask," Renata said. "Dad won't talk about it."

Marguerite cut a small piece of meat. "Have you thought to ask your uncle Porter?" This was something she'd been wondering. Porter had been there for nearly all of it; he could have shed a lot of light.

"Caitlin doesn't let him see us," Renata said. "She doesn't like my dad, I guess, and she doesn't like Uncle Chase. She has no use for anybody in Porter's family."

"That's too bad," Marguerite said. She wished she could say she was surprised, but Porter had gone against all good sense when he decided to marry Caitlin. "Surely you see him at school?"

"Never," Renata said. "He only teaches graduate students now, and every time I stop by they say he's busy."

"Right," Marguerite said. She cleared her throat. "Well, let's see. Your mother."

As Marguerite talked, Renata ate slowly. She laid her knife and fork down while she was asking a question; otherwise she savored every bite of the meat, the rich, lemony sauce, the asparagus, the chewy bread, thick with b.u.t.ter. When the clock struck the quarter hour, the half hour, the hour, Renata straightened, arched her back, stretched her legs under the table. Marguerite poured what seemed like an endless stream of champagne into Renata's gla.s.s, which she didn't need. She was very drunk-and yet, instead of impeding Renata's concentration, it enhanced it. Renata absorbed every word: Marguerite and Porter meeting at the Musee du Jeu de Paume under Renoir's Les Parapluies, Marguerite's first minutes on Nantucket when Porter brought her to the new restaurant, the wormy chestnut floors, the driftwood mantelpiece, the prix-fixe menu, the night Porter first brought in Candace, the kiss, the tin of saffron. The walk with Candace through the moors after Porter's picture appeared in The New York Times with another woman, the dinners when Candace and Marguerite sat by the fireplace in the very next room talking until well after midnight, the night in July when Daniel Knox first set foot in Les Parapluies and made it clear he wasn't leaving until Candace agreed to go out with him. Their first meal alone together, Marguerite said, was one that she cooked them: cedar-planked salmon and potatoes Anna.

"I'll bet your father never told you that," Marguerite said.

"Never," Renata said. "Do you think he even remembers?"

"He remembers," Marguerite said. "He swore I put something in the food that made him fall in love."

Renata smiled. She was wallowing in this talk like a pig in mud; she was sucking it in like a dog with his snout stuck out a car window. Her parents together, her parents in love-it was Renata's own history she was hearing about.

"Your father thought I was back in the kitchen stirring potions in my cauldron, my uncut hair graying in its braid. Even before your mother died, he never fully trusted me."

Renata kept quiet; she sensed this was probably true. She marveled that it was growing so late and no one from Vitamin Sea had called-not her father, not Cade.

"No one has called," she said.

"I unplugged the phone," Marguerite said.

"And no one has come by."

"Not yet," Marguerite said. She sipped her water and took a rejuvenating breath. She enjoyed telling Renata about the good times: the restaurant open, Marguerite and Porter together, Candace alive. Was she making herself clear? Could the child see her mother as Marguerite saw her-showered after a long day of exercise and sun, in one of the c.o.c.ktail dresses that left her shoulder bare. Her blond hair freed of its elastic and spilling down her back. Her easy manner, like the best women of that time, full of simplicity and grace.

"She desperately wanted to go to Africa," Marguerite said. "She wanted to open a restaurant in the Sahara."

"She did?"

"We went to Morocco together, your mother and I."

"You did?" In her mind, Renata heard the metallic rain of coins falling from a slot machine. Jackpot. This was something she never would have known about her mother if she weren't sitting right here. Her mother had been to Morocco. She had gone running through the medina in a Boston Red Sox cap; the men who owned the carpet shops, the men who carved thuya wood, the men who served conical dishes filled with tagine, the men who drove the taxis, the men who pressed juice out of oranges on the Djemaa el-Fna, they had called after Renata's mother in wonder. It was her blond hair, her smile, her sweet and awkward French-the whole country fell in love with her.

"Your mother was one of those people," Marguerite said. "Everyone was drawn to her-friends, perfect strangers. She could do no wrong; she could get away with anything. I can't tell you how many times I wished I could be like that. I wanted to...be Candace." Marguerite arranged her silverware carefully at an angle on the side of her plate and folded her napkin. She had never admitted this to anyone; she hadn't even thought it all the way through in her own mind-but yes, it was true. When Marguerite stood in front of Madame Verge's mirror she thought she would grow up to be like Candace. Marguerite smiled. "I'm going to guess you take after your mother."

Renata's first instinct was to deny it. Her father loved her unconditionally, of course, and Action and Cade. She attracted people easily-like Miles and Sallie. Renata wasn't sure what all these people saw in her; she wasn't sure who they thought she was-she didn't even know herself yet. Her mother had had a magnetism, something natural she emitted from her heart: love, maybe, patience, understanding. Whereas Renata felt like she was constantly giving pieces of herself away, she was engaged in a juggling act to keep everyone in her life happy. Yes, I'm being careful; yes, you're my best friend; yes, I love you the most.

Renata shook her head. No, not me. I'm not like that. "Whatever happened with the restaurant in Africa?"

"Nothing happened," Marguerite said. "While we were in Morocco, your mother discovered she was pregnant."

"With me?"

"With you."

"So I ruined her dream, then?"

"No, no, darling. It would never have worked out anyway, for a million reasons. It wasn't meant to be."

"You could still do it," Renata said.

Marguerite laughed. "That time has come and gone."

"No, really," Renata said. "You could open a restaurant over there like you and Mom wanted. You could leave this place for a while." Renata's voice sounded concerned and Marguerite wondered if it contained any pity. The last thing she wanted was for the child to pity her.

"Leave?" Marguerite said, as though the thought had never occurred to her. It had, of course. Sell her house and move to Paris. Or Calgary. Start over someplace new, like she was nineteen instead of sixty-three. "I'll have to think about that."

Marguerite cleared away the dinner plates and left Renata in the dining room to enjoy the champagne, the flowers, the ticking of the old clock. All this information at once, it was a lot for a person to process; Renata could use a few minutes of quiet. As Marguerite rinsed the dishes she pondered the girl's words. Out of the mouths of babes. You could still do it. Marguerite thought about the night Candace first mentioned the restaurant. She remembered Candace's anger with her, her frustration. I want you to reimagine. She could reimagine now, with ease: A restaurant with walls of canvas, swathed like the head of a Bedouin. A place in the middle of the desert that would be hard to reach, where some nights it would be just Marguerite alone, enjoying enough romantic atmosphere for fifty people. She would wait those nights for the ghost who left footprints in the sand.

Before she set out dessert, Marguerite retreated to her bedroom to fetch the photographs from her dresser. There were only the two that Marguerite had to show, though there were hundreds of others-pictures from the restaurant opening, benefit nights, pictures from Candace's wedding, from Morocco-that Marguerite kept in a wooden wine crate in the storage s.p.a.ce of the smallest of the five upstairs bedrooms. Maybe one day down the road she would have the courage to pull that box out and sift through it, but for now there were just these two pictures. Marguerite set them down in front of Renata. Renata picked up the christening picture first and squinted. Admittedly, there wasn't much light in the dining room, but Marguerite didn't want to spoil the atmosphere by making it brighter.

"That's me?" Renata said. "The baby?"

"That's your christening party."

"It was at the restaurant?"

"Of course. You're my G.o.dchild. The one and only."

Renata gazed at it with the most heartbreakingly earnest expression Marguerite had ever seen.

"You don't have pictures of Candace at your house?" Marguerite asked.

"Oh, we do," Renata said. "Just not this one."

"Right," Marguerite said. The girl's life had more holes than Swiss cheese. But here was a hole Marguerite could fill. Renata, Marguerite, and Candace at the party following Renata's christening. "It was probably the most glamorous christening party any child ever had. We had foie gras, black truffles, champagne, thirty-year port, Cuban cigars, caviar-"

"Really?" Renata said. "For me?"

"Really. For you." Daniel had insisted on footing the bill for everything, though Marguerite had given a case of champagne and Porter had, somehow, conjured up the cigars. "It was a big deal, your arrival in the world."

"I love this picture," Renata said.

"Yes, so do I." Marguerite studied it, trying to see with fresh eyes. Both she and Candace looked so proud, so awestruck, that they might have been the baby's parents: mother and G.o.dmother.

The other photograph was black-and-white. It was taken one long-ago autumn; it was just Candace and Marguerite sitting at one of the deuces facing Water Street. Neither of them was looking at the camera; they had plates of food in front of them, but they weren't eating. Marguerite was saying something, and Candace's head was bent close to the table, listening. Marguerite doesn't remember the moment the photo was taken or even the night; it was snapped by one of the photographers from The Inquirer and Mirror. It ran the week of October 3, 1980, on the Seen on the Scene page. Marguerite had been furious; she'd called the newspaper and threatened to sue, though the editor of the paper had laughed and said, The picture's completely innocuous, Margo, a slice of life, and it's a d.a.m.n attractive shot of you both, I might add. The caption under the picture read: Chef Marguerite Beale engages in tete-a-tete with friend Candace Harris at French hot spot Les Parapluies. Marguerite never quite came around to the editor's point of view-to her the picture was an invasion of privacy; it reminded her uncomfortably of the picture of Porter with Overbite Woman in The New York Times. It put Marguerite and Candace's intimacy on display-however, it was this very thing that eventually endeared the picture to her, and she asked that the editor send her a print.

"Dessert?" she said. She spoke the word brightly, though inside she panicked. Dessert, no matter how sweet, meant the end. Marguerite would have to tell about the end.

"I'd love some," Renata said.

Marguerite disappeared into the kitchen.

9:30 P.M.

The young black woman came out onto the deck with her eyebrows knit together and her mouth pressed into a flat line. Even in the night air, lit only by candles and tiki torches, Daniel could tell she was a few shades paler than she'd been when she left. Daniel stood up and the table grew quiet. They had just been talking about the Opera House Cup sailing race, and an old boat they all remembered called Christmas.