Laurie Horowitz - The Family Fortune

“Dessert?” she asked.

“Isabelle, tell me.”

“Look, it wouldn’t be right for me to say anything—not now. I think he might be really interested in you. Let’s wait and see.”

“Who told you he was interested in me?” I asked.

“Maddie. She works at the Buffingtons’. She’s Jimmy’s girlfriend. Guy told Glenda.”

“But he only came to the island today.” I thought back. Hadn’t he said that?

“He’s been on the island four days,” Isabelle said. “I brought an apple pie home. You want it with ice cream or without?” She was up and already standing by the door.

“With,” I said.

She disappeared into the house and I sucked up the last of my spaghetti. Of course Guy had every right to come to the island and not come over to visit us.

But what was this besotted act of his? Besotted people usually can’t wait to burst in on their beloved. They don’t wait four days, then amble over, pretending they’ve just arrived. What was he about? Isabelle, and her vague allusions, only made it worse.

I could have tried to convince her to tell me more about Guy, but I knew that once she made up her mind, she wouldn’t say anything more until she thought the time was right.

The rain had been falling hard for days and we were all bored and grumpy. Of everyone, I was the least bothered by the weather because I had my books and the foundation work. I loved my room, especially with the wind and rain beating on the windows. But the bad weather didn’t allow for the tennis, golf, and trips to the beach that usually kept the family out of the house most of the day. We were all holed up together and even I was feeling the strain of it.

What made it worse was that Guy came every day at around lunchtime. I felt that no matter how comfortable I was upstairs, the only polite thing to do was to go down. The thing I didn’t like about Guy was probably the thing my family liked most—his constant prattle. He could talk about anything for hours. The only word that wasn’t in his vocabulary was silence. Sometimes, if I didn’t go downstairs right away, he’d come up to get me. He’d shout from the landing, then I’d hear his feet on the stairs. He had a jaunty way of taking the steps two at a time, and somehow he always caught me unprepared. I might be pulling a shirt over my bra or zipping up my pants, and he’d burst right in as if he had a proprietary interest in me.

I entered the living room just as Miranda said, “I’m so bored, I think I might die of it.” And she did look like she was about to expire from something. She was draped over the sofa like a wet rag.

“I could go out and rent us some movies,” Dolores offered.

Teddy looked up from his paper.

“That’s not a bad idea. Very nice of you to go out in this rain just to get us some movies.”

No one moved.

I took a seat and looked out the window. I liked the island bluster, the dark skies and gusting wind. There was something primordial about the roughness of an island storm. It made me feel like cozying up with a good book. Of course, as anyone would have been quick to point out, just about anything made me feel like cozying up with a good book.

“What did you think of the Buffingtons’ party, Guy?” Miranda asked. That was several days ago and I wondered what made her bring it up now.

“They always have good parties,” Guy said noncommittally.

“And what about Glenda, what do you think of her?”

“She’s on the thin side,” he said. “Makes her look a little pinched.”

“I’ve never heard a man complain about a woman being too thin,” Miranda said. She ran her hand over her eighteen-inch waist.

“Some men like a little meat on the bones, don’t they, Guy?” Teddy said. Unlike Charlie, Teddy was not a natural man’s man. Whenever he made a reference to anything remotely sexual, it made me feel queasy. Maybe it was because he was my father.

“Glenda told me that she volunteers at a home for battered women. It sounds very cloak-and-dagger. They can’t tell anyone where the house is in case the husbands find out,” Miranda said.

“You can’t fault a woman who does good works. Don’t you think so, Jane?” Guy asked.

“Of course,” I answered, but I was barely paying attention. I was looking at a wren flitting about trying to find some shelter from the wind and rain.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” Dolores said. “When my husband hit me, I just hit him back.” Her voice was so casual she might have been talking about what she had for breakfast. She obviously had no idea what effect her statement would have on this group. Everyone in the room stared at her in shocked silence. Dolores worried the edge of her blouse with a manicured nail.

“Howard Mudd?” I asked. I had a hard time imagining a gay makeup artist taking a whack at Dolores.

“No,” she said. “My first husband. It was a long time ago. Let’s just forget I said anything.”

I was sure we would all be happy to forget she’d said anything—if we could. Teddy spoke first.

“I’m sure if Michael Buffington were alive, he wouldn’t like Glenda to do that. People could imply things.”

“Like what things?” I asked.

“That she has a special interest, so to speak. So many people get involved in causes for personal reasons. Someone gets cancer and they become a cancer research advocate. A brother dies of AIDS and suddenly homosexuality is no longer a problem. In fact, it’s a cause célèbre. People are like that. They are basically self-interested,” Teddy said.

“Do you think that, Guy?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t want to disagree with your father, but I don’t think all people are self-interested.”

“What about you, Miranda?” I asked.

“I agree with Daddy.”

“And you, Dolores?”

“I don’t think much about it. All I was trying to say before is that women have resources. That’s all I was trying to say. Not all women are helpless.”

I was beginning to see that Dolores was one of the least helpless of them all. It might look like, as a family, we were in a downward spiral, but we still lived like rich people. She had seen something she wanted, a man or a lifestyle—I wasn’t sure which—and she was doing everything in her power to get it. And it looked like her powers were considerable.

“Whatever happened to your first husband, Dolores?” I asked.

My father shot me a look. I was treading on the thin ice of decorum. I felt a little like the probing Priscilla.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” she said. “He was a very unusual man—a boy, really. He wanted to be Hemingway and he drank a lot and read A Moveable Feast over and over again until he could recite it by heart.” She smiled as if this memory was not unpleasant.

Guy walked over to where I was sitting and perched on the arm of my chair. I felt stifled. I couldn’t make him out. For all his chatter, good looks, and general attempts to please, I still felt that there was something missing in him—something hollow at his core. He read the books everyone was reading, saw the exhibits that were reviewed well in the Boston Globe, went to Symphony Hall in winter and Tanglewood in the summer. He grabbed for all the beautiful things the world had to offer, but I felt that he did so only because he wanted to be able to make effective dinner-party conversation.

“Let’s go out,” I said.

“In this?” my father asked. He barely looked up from the paper. “Not me. I’ll leave that to the young and foolish.”

“You’d have to include yourself, then,” Dolores said. “The young part, not the foolish part, I mean.” She blushed and it was a pretty blush.

“Nonetheless, dear, I’m not going,” my father said.

Guy, Miranda, Dolores, and I put on rain gear and headed out to a pub in Oak Bluffs. Guy insisted on driving in his small BMW sports car, which required me and Dolores to sit in the back with our chins resting on our knees.

The rain pelted down, the windows fogged, and Guy kept playing with the defogger. Finally he opened a window which sent a wedge of rain back onto Dolores.

“I’m soaked,” she said. “That’s just great. Just add that to what I said to your father and my day is complete.” She squeezed her wet hair with a fist.

“Teddy understood what you meant,” I said.

“I never want to look stupid,” Dolores said.

Miranda and Guy were in the front seat, and because of the wind, they couldn’t hear us. I felt sorry for Dolores. What she didn’t understand was that it didn’t matter whether she looked stupid or not. It was the fact that Teddy and Miranda felt Dolores was inferior that endeared her to them. Should she suddenly find the cure to a deadly disease—as unlikely as that appeared to be—they’d want nothing more to do with her.

The pub was crowded. We were not the only people on the island who were going stir-crazy. On a sunny afternoon, the place would have been deserted, but that day the pub felt like a party of wet survivors who had made it to a place where they thought they might have some fun. The jukebox was playing “Brown-Eyed Girl.”

Miranda, Dolores, and I slid into a booth while Guy, ever the gentleman, went to the bar to get us drinks. I had a view of the front window and I saw something that made me, for a moment, unable to catch my breath.

Miranda asked me if I was feeling well. She said that I looked green, which I’m sure was hardly an exaggeration. My mind was playing tricks. For just an instant, I thought I saw Max Wellman walking across the street under a golf umbrella. It couldn’t be Max. What would he be doing here? He was still on his book tour.