The Love Season Part 8

"Well, they're still married," Sallie said. "My mother regrets not having a big to-do. She's pinned all her hopes on me, poor woman."

"You'll get married?" Renata said.

"No," Sallie said. "Not in any way that they'd approve of."

There were a few seconds of silence. Staying on this topic was like sitting bare b.u.t.ted on a barnacled rock; Renata wanted to get off. She gently reclaimed the list from Sallie, folded it up, and tucked it back into her bag.

"May I have another beer, please?" she asked.

Miles jumped up. "I'll get it." He opened the cooler and flipped the top off a bottle. "Sandwich?" he said.

"Not yet."

"Look at you, catering to her every need," Sallie said. "How sweet."

"I'm a sweet guy." He sat back down next to Renata, even closer than last time. Meanwhile, Sallie laid a hand on Renata's bicep; her fingers grazed the side of Renata's breast.

"I'm going back out for a beating," Sallie said. "Will you keep an eye on me?"

"Since when do you need a spotter?" Miles said.

"Since today. It's hairier out there than it looks."

"I'll keep an eye out," Renata said, though she had no idea what this entailed. If Sallie did get caught in a rip current, Renata would never be able to save her. All she had wanted from the afternoon was a swim, and yet the waves were pounding the sh.o.r.e so brutally that Renata was afraid to go in, lest she lose her top or get knocked on her a.s.s.

Sallie pointed a finger and smiled. "Don't go getting married while I'm gone," she said, and with that she picked up her board and paddled out.

"Yep," Miles said, once Sallie was past the first set of breaking waves. "She likes you."

Renata sipped her beer. "Shut up."

"What?" he said.

There had been something familiar about it, Renata thought. Miles on one side, Sallie on the other, competing for her attention. It was like all the hours she spent, early on, in the company of Cade and Action-until they realized they didn't like each other that much, they were jealous of each other, they resented each other. Boyfriend, best friend: It didn't work out that well. Renata had spent the last year juggling, compromising, trying to keep them both happy. She sipped her beer and closed her eyes.

"Are you okay?"

"Huh?" Renata said. Miles was on her towel now, or part of his leg was. He had stretched out, and his lower leg and foot were on her towel. And when he spoke, he leaned closer and his right elbow sank into the sand next to her towel and his left hand was on her towel.

"I asked if you were okay."

She nodded, confused. She was lying: She wasn't okay. She felt lost. Cade, Action, her father, Marguerite, her mother, Suzanne. And now Miles, who, if she wasn't hallucinating, was leaning down to kiss her. She closed her eyes. Was this happening? He kissed her. He scooted closer and kissed her again, really kissed her, with his tongue. He tasted different from Cade, though she couldn't say how. She didn't have time to think about it; she was too busy worrying about the three hundred witnesses to this treachery-the four girls sunbathing near them, the hairy beast Montrose on the other side of the volleyball net, and most crucially Sallie: What on earth would Sallie think if she saw Renata and Miles kissing only seconds after she had discovered that Renata was engaged? Renata propped herself up on her elbows and did a quick scan-the girls were asleep, the volleyball game was its own spectacle, it had drawn a crowd, and Sallie was indistinguishable from the other surfers. No one had seen them, thank G.o.d. Miles took hold of her chin. "Hey," he said. "I'm over here." He kissed her again.

I'm trying to talk her out of it.

Stop! Renata screamed at herself. Stop right now! But all she could think was: I want more. How do I get more? Miles was turned on, she could tell through his bathing suit that he was hard, and her mind rooted out possibilities: the dunes, the water, his car? Her body was begging for more-she wanted him to reach inside her bikini top and fondle her breast; she wanted him to slip his hand between her legs. Look what you've done to me. Wait a minute! Cade, she thought. Cade, Cade, Cade. Thinking about Cade didn't help. He'd said they would go to the beach together today, but he had vanished without so much as a note. He would expect her to understand; he was sailing with his sick father. How could she argue with that? She couldn't. Cade was, as always, doing the right thing, whereas she, in her anger and confusion, was doing the wrong thing.

Renata broke free for a second, checked around them again. The girls, the volleyball game-on someone's radio, John Mellencamp sang "Jack and Diane." Miles probably kissed girls on this beach all the time. He was a predator; she should escape from him now, while she had the chance. Renata narrowed her eyes and tried to pick Sallie out of the water. If Sallie would only come back, she'd be safe.

"You want to get out of here?" Miles asked.

This was her chance to turn him down, to prove she was pure of soul, worthy of three karats, worthy of Cade, upstanding fellow-but instead, Renata nodded mutely. Miles wrapped a towel around his waist and led her away from the girls and the game, past an older couple, an anomaly in this thirty-and-under crowd, the woman heavyset and topless, lying facedown, reading a novel, the man even heavier in a webbed lawn chair with his binoculars trained on the surfers. They didn't move as Renata and Miles snuck past.

Up a second, smaller staircase, up to the bluff, into the dunes. There was nothing behind them-no road, no houses, nothing but eel gra.s.s and bowls of soft, white sand, some with circles of ash where people had lit bonfires, some with empty beer cans and condom wrappers. Renata followed behind Miles, every so often turning around to look at the beach. No one was shouting after them; no one would notice they were gone. Cade was on the other side of the island, possibly still sailing. He would never know.

If you did a bad thing and no one ever found out, Renata asked herself, was it still a bad thing?

Just as Miles led her into a deep bowl, deep enough so that they would never be seen and as wide as a king-size bed, Renata's head began to clear. What was she doing? Miles unwrapped the towel from his waist and laid it down in the sand. He sat.

"Come here," he said.

She could have run, or claimed she had to pee and then run; she could have started to cry, owning up to her guilt-any of these strategies would have worked. But she wasn't strong enough or mature enough to turn down something she wanted so badly. She'd wanted him since the first second she'd seen him at the airport, when his forearms flexed as he lifted their luggage into the back of the Driscolls' Range Rover. And then with the hose. And then making the sandwiches. Now here he was, offering himself up on a platter.

As she stepped down into the bowl, her feet sank into the soft sand. He reached out and pulled her onto the towel. If he had been any bit rougher or more insistent, she would have stopped him. But he kissed her slowly and gently in a way that made her think love. This was a trick, of course; she hadn't been kissed by that many men, but she recognized his tenderness as a trick, a lure. He took his shirt off her body and his hands went where she had willed them to go earlier. She was panting; she wanted his bathing suit off; she wanted him right on top of her. He was taking his good old time, going slower and slower to maybe see if he could get her to think love again. But who was he kidding? She cried out softly in frustration, "Oh, come on!"

He stopped. His bathing suit was uneven around his hips, his c.o.c.k strained through the nylon. He was sweating. It was blistering hot in the bowl of white sand, blocked from the ocean breeze. By now Renata's bathing suit top was off, discarded, buried somewhere, she didn't care where. She didn't care! She wanted to scream the words: I DON'T CARE! About Cade or her father, or even, at that point, her mother, and the sad little white cross that marked her demise.

"I'm thinking of you," Miles said. He had his hands by her ears; he was holding himself above her, shading her, his knees resting between her open legs. "You're about to burn your whole house down."

She thought of Sallie kissing her jaw and Cade kissing her last night on the guest room's deck and Action, who had kissed her on the mouth and each of the palms the day she left for the woods of West Virginia. She thought of her father kissing her good night on the forehead every night for fourteen years that she could recall. She thought of Suzanne kissing her upon the announcement of her engagement, kissing her with reverence and pride, like a mother would. Renata did not have a single memory of kissing her own mother.

"Burn it down," she said.

2:40 P.M.

The tart was a new recipe, flagged in a copy of Bon Appet.i.t, June 1995, so not really new at all, but new to Marguerite because she had never tried it. She had marked the page and cataloged the magazine, however. Just in case.

Marguerite turned on different music: Tony Bennett singing Cole Porter. Happy songs, sad songs, love songs, lovesick songs. Marguerite whistled and, now that the mailman had come and gone, she hummed.

The first thing she did was tackle the tart crust. This was a pastry skill, and pastry skills had never been her strong suit. She loved to bake bread, but crusts were different from bread. Bread could take a beating, whereas crusts wanted to be handled as little as possible. Bread liked warmth and humidity, whereas crusts liked the cold. The b.u.t.ter had to be cold; the egg had to be cold. Marguerite minced the herbs, relishing the feel of her ten-inch Wusthof in her hands-a knife older than her dinner guest-and the sound of the blade against her cutting board. Dicing, chopping, mincing, all like what they said about riding a bike. Marguerite had always been gifted with a knife; she had cut herself only once, in the early days at Les Trois Canards. Gerard de Luc had been screaming at her in French, something she didn't understand, and Marguerite, who was aiming for a perfectly uniform brunoise of carrots, put the knife through her second and third fingertips to the tune of fifteen st.i.tches. After that, she worked to achieve a kind of zen with her knife. When she held it, she blocked everything else out.

The scent of the herbs intensified once they were minced-minty, peppery, pickly. For some reason, this smell got to her. Marguerite started to cry. She wasn't tearing up like she might over an onion but crying. Crying so that she had to leave the herbs in a wet green pile on the cutting board next to the carefully measured flour and salt, crying so that she had to return the b.u.t.ter to the fridge, where it would stay cold, and find a place to sit down. Not the kitchen table, the chairs were too hard; not the bedroom, the bed was too soft. She wandered like Goldilocks through her own house, her eyes blinded by tears, to the sofa in the sitting room where, on any other day, she would have been reading her Alice Munro stories. She settled in a way that felt like collapsing.

Okay, what was it? What was wrong? She was sobbing, gasping, wheezing for air. Cla.s.sic hysterics. And yet she was curiously detached. Part of her was watching herself cry, thinking, Go ahead, get it out, get as crazy and as dramatic as you want now, better now than the second the girl walks in; we don't want to send her running back down Quince Street with the news that you actually have lost your mind. The rational part of Marguerite did the watching. The irrational part of her, the part fully engaged in the sobbing, was feeling all the things she had forbidden herself to feel for the past fourteen years, because she might have wailed like this each and every day. She had been thorough and adamant about stripping her life of all sensory reminders from her old life, like the smell of those herbs, so that she wouldn't be tempted to dwell on what she had lost. It wasn't only her taste buds that had been numbed; it was her heart, too. But now, just for a minute, with snot and tears dripping down her face, she felt.

It was practically legend, the way that Daniel Knox had stormed into their lives. He appeared one night in July, a busy Friday night, around nine thirty. Marguerite, Candace, and Porter had just settled down on the west banquette to dinner. There were still a few tables lingering over dessert; this was usual. What was unusual was the man who approached from the bar, a full drink in his hand, and pulled out the fourth seat, the seat next to Candace, and said, "I know I'm being awfully forward, but-"

Candace looked up and said, "Oh! h.e.l.lo."

Marguerite and Porter exchanged glances. Candace received a lot of attention from men. Drinks were sent to the table all the time. A few men waited at the bar until Candace rose from dinner; they thought they could trap her there, like an insect in their web. The men were usually older, graying, wealthy; some had accents. They were all full of promises, of ideas; they had a big boat, a big house, a big party the following night. Would Candace join them? Sometimes the answer was yes, and a few nights later Marguerite and Porter would hear about the big boat, the big house, the big party-but most of the time the answer was no. No one had ever been bold enough to approach the table. It was the chef's table, the owner's table. Marguerite ate after everyone was finished for a reason. She wanted a modic.u.m of privacy, at least as much as she afforded her guests. She would never have sat down at one of their tables uninvited. The way Candace said, "Oh! h.e.l.lo," however, made both Marguerite and Porter think that this man with the dark blond hair and the untrimmed beard was someone Candace knew. When the man sat down, Candace fumbled with the introduction.

"This is Marguerite Beale, the chef/owner, and my brother Porter Harris. And Marguerite, Porter, this is-"

"Daniel," he said. "Daniel Knox." They shook hands over and around their drinks.

Candace laughed nervously and said, "And my name is Candace Harris."

"I know," Daniel said.

"You're the man I see when I'm running, right?" she said. "Down at-"

"The Beach Club," Daniel said. "Yes. I own it. I bought it five years ago."

"Aha!" Porter said. He could talk to anyone, given a foothold. "So you're the chap who made all the changes."

"Capital improvements," Daniel said.

"You raised the dues, I hear."

"Had to."

"You must not be very popular," Porter said.

"More popular than one might think," Daniel said. "The place looks a h.e.l.l of a lot better. You should come see it sometime."

"I'd love to," Porter said.

Francesca approached the table with three appetizer plates. "You have a fourth?" she said. Her voice barely concealed her annoyance; serving Marguerite was her last duty before tipping out.

Marguerite shook her head ever so slightly and tried to send Francesca a distress signal. We don't know who this man is or where he came from.

"Oh no," Daniel said. "I wouldn't want to impose."

Candace put a hand on his arm. "Stay," she said. "We'd love it." She looked to Marguerite.

"We'd love it," Marguerite said, though nothing was further from the truth. "A fourth! Francesca, would you ask Lance to bring Mr. Knox another drink. Scotch, is it?"

"Scotch," Daniel said. "But really, I have a full one here-"

"And a bottle of the 1974 Louis Jadot cabernet from the cellar. Two bottles."

"Well," Porter said. "Daisy is pulling out the big guns tonight."

Francesca nodded, then swept away from the table. She was back a second later with another plate of the wild mushroom ravioli and the Scotch and the wine.

"More bread?" she asked.

"No, thank you," Marguerite said. She smiled wickedly at Porter and nudged his foot under the table. Together they made sure that Daniel Knox always had a full scotch as well as one waiting, and a full gla.s.s of wine. Drink, they encouraged him. Drink! Daniel Knox talked about the Beach Club; then he talked about living in New York, trading petroleum futures, his retirement at age thirty. Candace seemed interested. She was good at that; she practiced patience all day long at the Chamber of Commerce, fielding phone call after phone call of people asking if there was a bridge to Nantucket. Daniel asked what Candace did for work, she told him, he asked about her running, and she talked about the New York Marathon. This year for sure.

By the time the entrees arrived, Daniel Knox was intoxicated. He slurred his words, he stared at his swordfish woefully, and Marguerite knew he was done for. He didn't eat a single bite. Candace chattered along; Porter talked about Nantucket as it was in the fifties when he first started coming there; Marguerite watched over Candace's shoulder as the kitchen was cleaned and closed up for the night. The conversation proceeded as if Daniel Knox weren't there-and a few seconds later, he wasn't. He excused himself for the men's room. Porter chuckled as he filled Daniel's winegla.s.s for the tenth time.

"You two are awful," Candace said; then she smiled.

"Don't I know it," Marguerite said. "I'm sure he's not used to the likes of us."

"He seems like a nice man," Candace said.

"Does he?" Marguerite said.

"Yes!" Candace said, peeved now. "I'm going to check on him."

It took ten days for Daniel to resurface and ask Candace out on a date. He made a hearty campaign for Ship's Inn or the Club Car; he even offered to cook himself, in the small apartment behind the Beach Club where he lived. Candace sweetly declined. I like to eat at Les Parapluies, she said. Sorry. That's what I like.

And so Marguerite fed Candace and a very reluctant Daniel Knox at the regular seven thirty seating, just like everyone else. Cedar-planked salmon and potatoes Anna. Daniel Knox, despite the fact that he drank almost nothing and did not take his eyes off Candace, cleaned his plate. The following morning, Candace cornered Marguerite in the kitchen.

"Daniel wants to know what you put in our food," she said. "He swears it made him fall in love." Candace kissed Marguerite on both cheeks. "So whatever it was, thank you."

They came in together a lot that summer, though some nights they took sandwiches to the beach, or they went to the movies, or they attended a party thrown by one of the Beach Club members. At first Candace referred to Daniel as "the man I'm dating," and Porter and Marguerite followed her lead. "Daniel Knox," they said, when people asked who he was. "The man Candace is dating." Candace still came to the restaurant without Daniel, though less and less frequently. Marguerite asked, as casually as possible, if things were getting serious. Candace would smile and tilt her head. "Serious?" She was being coy and it drove Marguerite mad. The one time Marguerite tried to talk about it with Porter, they ended up arguing, which almost never happened. It was late at night, they were at Marguerite's house on Quince Street. Marguerite was sitting at her dressing table, unpinning her hair. Porter lay in bed reading a biography of John Singer Sargent.

"Candace is acting strangely," Marguerite said. "When I ask her about Daniel, I can't get a straight answer."

"I think that's probably a good sign," Porter said. "They're falling in love."

"Falling in love is a good thing?" Marguerite asked.

"It was for us," Porter said. He laid his book down on his chest. "Come here."

Marguerite spun on her stool. "I don't think Daniel is right for your sister."

"Because you don't like him."

"I do like him."

"Oh, Daisy, you do not. But then I suspect you wouldn't like anyone Candace dated. You're more protective than a mother."

"I'm not protective."

"Okay, then, you're jealous."

"Jealous? You've got to be kidding."

"Right," Porter said. "Why should you be jealous? You have me."

"It's just not like her to be so secretive," Marguerite said. "Your sister and I tell each other everything. And now there's this...thing, this big thing, that she won't talk about."

"Probably because she senses that you don't really want to hear about Daniel. Because you don't like Daniel. Because you're jealous."

"Please shut up," Marguerite said. "You're giving me a headache."

"You brought it up," Porter said. "And I'm certain you don't want my advice, but if I were you, I'd get used to the idea of Candace and Daniel together. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they got married."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Porter."

"I heard her call him her boyfriend."

"You did not."

"I did. 'My boyfriend, Daniel Knox.' "