Seeing Max again had opened up old wounds, and like a sick dog who hides under the porch, I wanted to go someplace I could nurse my injuries.
I drove off the ferry into a blustering island wind. My friend Isabelle had faxed me directions to the cottage. It all happened quickly, because the owners of the house were as desperate for the rent as I was to disappear.
Even on a cold gray day, the gingerbread cottages in Oak Bluffs make you think of fairy tales. If your life were a toy, this is where you’d live. The small houses are multicolored—lavender, white, green, orange, yellow, and purple. I drove past one with heart-shaped cutouts around the trim and another with intricate scrollwork. My house was blue with cathedral windows—a sanctuary. I parked the car, went to the door, and, as instructed, pulled the key out from under a ceramic garden gnome. The house was miniature but complete. I walked through the front room, decorated in wicker and white denim, and into the kitchen at the back. Someone had turned on the heat and filled the refrigerator with groceries. Isabelle.
I spent the afternoon unpacking. Instead of acting with my usual efficiency, I took it slow. I put my clothes into closets and drawers with a dreamy disregard for time. I listened to the radio for company. A commentator was reviewing Max’s new book. It wasn’t the first review I’d heard, but it was the nastiest. He called the book a “puerile puddle of palaver.” Obviously the critic was in love with the sound of words in his own mouth.
Max had been widely reproached for Post because, though Max was known for his humor and social satire, this time he had attacked a serious subject. They said he was obviously trying to write his “important” novel. Thirty-nine is a good age to try to write your “important” novel. This one was about a family on Long Island in the aftermath of 9/11. I could have told him this was a subject that should be avoided, if only because of the slew of stories I received that tried to say something about it and failed. Only time would make that subject somewhat manageable, and there hadn’t been enough of it. Maybe there never would be.
The book was selling well, based on Max’s reputation alone. There was also some talk of awards, so not everyone agreed that he’d reached over his head.
I took my copy of Post from the pile of books I’d brought to the island and put it on my night table.
That evening I met Isabelle and her son Jimmy at the Black Dog for dinner. Isabelle’s thick curly hair was tied back with a silver clasp. She didn’t look much older than she had on the day she left Wellesley. She had an innocence and an energy about her. Though her life had not been easy, she always put a positive spin on it. Being bright and resourceful, she had known just what to do with the bakery to attract the wealthy islanders and tourists. Isabelle had been serving cappuccino and espresso long before expensive coffee chains became a blight on the landscape.
“I can’t believe you filled the refrigerator,” I said before even saying hello.
“Why not?”
I gave Jimmy a peck on the cheek. Last year when I saw him, he was a boy, but now he had the look of a man. He even held out my chair. I smiled at Isabelle. She gave me a proud-parent smile in return.
“No one in my own family would ever think to do anything like that for me.”
“No offense, Jane, but your family brings new levels of meaning to the term self-centered.”
I laughed. Jimmy looked at me like he didn’t know how having your family insulted could be so funny.
“How are they anyway?” Isabelle asked.
“Teddy and Miranda are in Palm Beach for the winter. Or, as they put it—they are wintering in Palm Beach. The truth is, they spent so much money we had to rent out our house to rebuild our capital.”
“The only reason I’m surprised,” Isabelle said, “is that I was under the impression that there was so much money to begin with, to go through it all would take a real effort.”
“That may be the only real effort they ever made,” I said. “Let’s just say that they had few frugal habits.”
We ordered hamburgers and clam chowder.
“We should keep that between ourselves,” I said. “They think they’re putting one over on everyone.” I felt foolish even as I said it, but Isabelle knew everything about everyone on the island, and although she never had bad intentions, she could sometimes be indiscreet.
“Who do they think cares?” Isabelle asked.
“Society at large,” I said in an overblown voice.
She laughed. “A family that believes they are living in a Henry James novel. How picturesque. So, Jane, what brings you here in the dead of winter? Not that we aren’t delighted to have you.”
Both Isabelle and Jimmy looked at me with the same expression. Jimmy was a handsome kid, dark hair, olive skin, dark eyes. He had Isabelle’s coloring, but otherwise he didn’t look much like her. I had wondered, at times, who his father was, but it wasn’t the kind of question I’d ever ask, even of a close friend like Isabelle.
“Could you picture me in Palm Beach?” I asked. “Lime green is not exactly my color. I don’t play golf. Besides, I’m sure they rented a nice apartment, but still, we’d be on top of each other.”
There was one more important reason, a reason I hadn’t even admitted to myself—and that was that they hadn’t asked me. Miranda had replaced me with Dolores as easily as she might have replaced a Gucci loafer with a Jack Purcell sneaker.
I had built what little self-concept I had on certain bricks, and one of them was that I was essential to my father and sister. Essential? I wasn’t even necessary.
In my little gingerbread house I had time to think—too much time. I had never lived alone. I spent time alone, but Miranda and Teddy were always coming and going and just having them in the house changed the quality of the solitude.
Every morning I went to Isabelle’s bakery for coffee and muffins. Once a week I received a package from Tad. Even though we had chosen the winner of the fellowship, we still had to fill the Review. Mornings, I sat at my desk on the second floor of my little house looking out onto the other cottages, most of which were empty in winter, and read the stories, made the choices, and sent them back. I also took care of other foundation business—wrote checks and personal rejection letters for the stories we wouldn’t be using. Several weeks passed this way and I still hadn’t heard from Hope Bliss. She said it wasn’t going to be difficult to find Jack Reilly. He couldn’t be that hard to find.
I grieved for Max as if the loss were new. I don’t think I was grieving just for him, but for a past I might have spent better. Was my life going to end like this? The Review twice a year, the contest, the business of the foundation? I could do it all with my eyes closed. I wasn’t even forty. And stories like Jack Reilly’s, the ones that really excited me, were so few and far between. Maybe Basil Funk was right. I should incorporate more art into the foundation’s work. Somehow, though, I didn’t feel that was the answer.
And while I had made my retreat to the island, what had been happening up in Vermont? My source of information was Winnie, who unfortunately had no idea what really interested me.
Lindsay still wasn’t supposed to travel long distances, so she had moved in with the Franklins. Her prognosis was good, though according to Winnie, she seemed a bit odd.
“At least she remembers everyone now. We were really worried there for a while. But I don’t understand Max,” Winnie said on the phone. “I would have thought that he wouldn’t leave her side, but he only stayed until just after she woke up. Then he left on a book tour. I hope he’s not one of those guys who will get a girl’s hopes up only to drop her flat.”
“I don’t think he’s one of those guys,” I said, despite all the evidence to the contrary. Maybe he had gone back to the girl who had called him that night on his cell phone. Who knew what he was thinking? He was a different man from the one I had first fallen in love with.
But I, too, was surprised that Max had left so soon. He might have canceled a few dates of his tour. I had always thought that he was unlikely to leave the woman he loved in a precarious condition.
Charlie lifted up the extension. “Basil’s been asking about you,” he said.
Winnie said, “What are you talking about, Charlie? I didn’t hear Basil say a thing about Jane.”
“You weren’t there,” Charlie said.
“When wasn’t I there? I’m always there,” Winnie said.
“Well, you weren’t.”
Charlie hung up.
Winnie called every week. She complained of the sniffles during each call and the boys were always misbehaving.
“Anyway, Jane, you’re so lucky to be on the island by yourself. No responsibilities. You could have stayed with us for the winter, you know. We liked having you. Charlie and I fight even more when you’re not here.”
Considering how much they fought when I was there, this wasn’t a good sign.
One morning in mid-February I arrived at Isabelle’s, as usual, and she said she had a message for me. A Hope Bliss—what kind of name was that—had called her house looking for me. I remembered that I’d given Hope Isabelle’s number because at the time I didn’t have one.
I ate my cranberry muffin quickly and rushed back to the house to call Hope.
“Did you find him?” I asked as soon as she picked up the phone.
“Are you sure there is only a story involved here?” Hope asked.
“It’s a very good story,” I said.
“It was one of the strangest cases I’ve had lately,” she said. “Sorry it took me so long, but I had to do it the old-fashioned way. I trekked around all over the Boston area from one person to another to find anyone who had known him, or seen him. You want to know where I found him?”
“Of course I do.” What was she talking about—why would I have hired her if I didn’t want to know?
“He’s been under your nose the whole time.”
“Is he here on the Vineyard?”
“Yes.”
“Where does he live?”
“Oak Bluffs.”
“I’m in Oak Bluffs.”
“I know.”
“He’s in a gingerbread cottage four doors down from yours.”
“That’s crazy.”
“Isn’t it? You want to hear the craziest part?” I didn’t say anything so she continued. “He’s squatting.”
“What?”
“He found an empty house, got it open, and moved into it. He’s squatting.”
“That’s not too honest,” I said. I had seen Jack Reilly as an outlaw, even hoped he would be one, but the reality didn’t excite me as much as I thought it would. I was basically an honest person and expected other people to be honest. I’d imagined a bad boy, not a parasite.
“Damn straight. It’s stealing,” Hope said. “Anyway, that’s why he was so hard to find. He has a post office box in Lynn, but other than that it doesn’t look like he pays taxes, or has a bank account, or even has a telephone.”
When I told Isabelle about Jack Reilly, she said I should call the police, but I didn’t want to get the police involved. What if—and I was beginning to doubt it—Jack Reilly was all I’d dreamed him to be. What if when I opened the door, love hit me like a bucket of water from an upstairs window? Would I want the police shifting around at the bottom of the front walk waiting to drag him away?
It may have been ridiculous to put myself in jeopardy in pursuit of something I couldn’t even name, but I was determined to do it because if I didn’t, if I let the police go in and haul Jack Reilly away, I’d never know if, despite his antisocial behavior, he was the one.