Dabney

There was only one more secret she was keeping, and it was time for that to come out as well.

Clen took the news silently, as Dabney had known he would. She waited until after they made love because their lovemaking was precious to her and she wasn’t sure how much more of it there would be. It would be one of the things she missed the most—Clen thrusting into her, his hungry mouth on her breasts, his animal moans of joy and gratitude. He was so tender that he brought her to tears every time.

She lay spent and sweating, with her head on his chest. It was astonishing the way he could encircle her with one arm, how he could make her feel safer and more protected than any man with two. She thought back to when she had believed that her symptoms—the ache in her gut, the constant exhaustion, the breathlessness, the lack of appetite—were the result of the impossible position she had put herself in. Loving two men at once.

She would give up everything—her home, her morning coffee, the sunrise and sunset, the field of flowers at Bartlett Farm, the bluebird sky, the crimson moors in fall, the bump and rumble of the Impala’s tires over the cobblestones; she would give up good books and champagne and ribbon sandwiches and lobster dipped in melted butter and the rainbow fleet sailing around Brant Point Lighthouse and her dirty tennis serve and her pearls and her penny loafers and she would give up the chance of ever holding her grandchild. She would give it all up to Death, but please, she thought, please do not take away Clendenin.

“I’m sick,” she said. The dusk was gathering, but Dabney still heard birds and bumblebees outside the screened windows of Clen’s cottage. “I have pancreatic cancer, it’s terminal, a matter of months. A few more good months.”

Clen squeezed her until she thought she would break. It genuinely hurt; her organs, already so compromised, were being crushed like soft, overripe fruit. And yet it felt good. She knew what he was doing, what he was thinking; he wanted her so close that she became him. Come live inside me, we will be one, I will keep you safe, and you will not have to die alone.

  

Telling Agnes, of course, was even worse. It was one thing to leave a husband or a lover behind, and another thing entirely to leave a child.

Dabney told Agnes over breakfast—French toast with fresh peaches, crispy bacon, and home fries with herbs cut from the garden. It didn’t matter how beautiful the food was; as soon as Dabney opened her mouth, neither of them would be able to eat a bite. And yet it was Dabney’s nature to feed people. She couldn’t stop now.

“Darling,” Dabney said. “I’m sick.”

Agnes suspended a perfect slice of golden-pink peach over her plate. “What?” she said. “What kind of sick?’

“Darling,” Dabney said.

Agnes dissolved into tears. They were the tears of Little Girl Agnes—Agnes when she cut her knee on the sharp stones of the jetty, Agnes when she had a bad dream—and the heartbreak of it was almost too much for Dabney to bear.

  

Some days were still okay. Some days Dabney made it out for her walk and said hello to the same people and petted the same dogs. She then drove out to see Clendenin, and they swam in the pool of the big house and Clendenin made sandwiches, and Dabney ate them slowly, never wanting to arrive at the last bite. Dabney napped in the afternoon, she had to nap, she was so tired now, and in pain nearly all the time. She slept in Clendenin’s large, white, luxuriously sheeted bed while Clen read his newspapers at the oak table.

Some nights Dabney stayed at his cottage and cooked for him, and some nights she went home to see Agnes. Agnes was spending a lot of time with Riley. She met him at the beach after work, and they went out for oysters at Cru, or they grabbed fish tacos at the Easy Street Cantina.

The rosy aura around Agnes and Riley was so bright that Dabney could have seen it in the dark. Dabney wanted to ask what was going on between them, but she had learned, after forty-two couples, when to push and when to leave well enough alone. After all that had happened that summer, Agnes needed a friend, not a boyfriend.

But still, Dabney could hope.

  

Dabney called Nina and asked to meet her on the bench in front of the Chamber. Dabney brought two coffees from the pharmacy, with a cup of ice for Nina, and a wad of napkins in case Nina spilled her coffee upon hearing the news.

But when Dabney told her, she set her coffee down neatly between her feet, then dropped her face to her hands and cried. Dabney gave her the napkins, so she could wipe her face and blow her nose.

  

Dabney didn’t know what to do, think, or feel about Box.

He’d left a pair of readers by the sink in the bathroom. Everyone else Dabney knew bought their readers at the drugstore, but Box’s one vanity was specially made readers, the square black frames that defined him. Dabney couldn’t look at Box’s readers without thinking of Box’s eyes, the startling blue, the blue of glaciers—cold, she’d always thought. Frosty, indifferent, superior, when she was ill-disposed toward him.

His eyes had been so hurt that night at Elizabeth Jennings’s and then again at the Levinsons’. She had never before seen Box hurt, she realized. And she was the one who had done it to him.

  

She wanted to talk to him, tell him she was sick—but she couldn’t bring herself to do it just yet. He might think she was fabricating a story in order to gain his sympathy; he might think she was using her illness as some kind of excuse for her actions. He might think it was the ultimate in histrionics—and wasn’t it? I’m dying, Box, please forgive me! She didn’t call him because she had no right to ask him for mercy, no matter what her circumstances.

Agnes said, “Does Daddy know you’re sick?”

“No,” Dabney said.

“Do you want me to tell him?” Agnes asked.

“No. Please don’t. It’s not your responsibility. It’s mine.”

“You need to tell him, Mommy. I might slip.”

“Yes,” Dabney said. “I realize this.” Hiding things from Box hadn’t gone well.

Dabney called him, and as ever, was shuttled to his voice mail.

“Box,” she said. “Please, please call me back.” She swallowed. “Please.”

  

Dabney missed her job. It was nearly wedding season, and time for the fall festivals. Who would judge the best cranberry chutney, who would pin the ribbon on the biggest pumpkin, if not Dabney? She thought about the Chamber all the time, night and day. She worried about it, as she might have about a child who had been removed from her care and placed in a foster home.

Dabney couldn’t believe that no one had called her for help or advice. The fall audit would soon be upon them, and their grant proposal for the tourist council would be due. Nobody could deal with those things but Dabney. What was happening up there?

  

Nina Mobley was immediately hired as the PR director at Nantucket Cottage Hospital. It was a great job with better benefits and a large jump in salary. Dabney actually felt guilty. Had she been keeping Nina from an opportunity like this all along?

“My job at the Chamber was never about the job,” Nina said, when Dabney first went to visit her at the hospital. Nina had a corner office that overlooked the Old Mill. “It was only ever about working with you. It was about being the pulsing heart of the island. It was about strawberry frappes and you chewing your pearls and making fun of Vaughan Oglethorpe and watching to see who was driving up Main Street and Diana’s perfect cup of coffee, and the cadence of our days, which became weeks, which became months, and then years. Together.” Nina blinked and tears fell. “Eighteen and a half years I worked with my best friend. I know I should feel blessed.”

“Nina,” Dabney said. “Stop, please. I’m still here.”

“I know,” Nina said. “There is no way I can deal with this, other than to tell myself that we’re both going to live forever.”

  

Riley took a job playing guitar at the Brotherhood of Thieves three nights a week. One night, Dabney and Clen and Agnes went to see him. Dabney felt like a spectacle—she was out in public with her lover! But she hadn’t announced the desires of her heart to the world just so the two of them could remain sequestered at home. And her bravery paid off: they ended up having a marvelous time. They ordered a cheese board for Agnes, a favorite from her childhood, and they got thick sandwiches and chowder and curly fries, and they drank frosted mugs of beer and listened to Riley play.

He sang “Brown Eyed Girl,” by Van Morrison. Dabney had secretly requested this, and when Riley strummed the first chord, she grabbed Clen by his hand and they danced together in the small space in front of the tables. They were a broken couple—Clen with one arm, Dabney with cancer—but they could still spin like they had in high school and college, or almost, and the crowd cheered them on.

Making love in the green grass, behind the stadium with you…

She might never dance again, she realized, as she sat down, breathless, her pearls in a twist. She didn’t care. That had felt so good—wild, free, precious, lawless, the way dancing was supposed to feel.

The Brotherhood was packed with familiar faces—Julia from the office-supply store, Genevieve from Dr. Field’s office, Diana from the pharmacy lunch counter—and they all came up to Dabney, saying how sorry they were that she had retired from the Chamber and how Nantucket would never be the same.

  

It was Agnes who let Dabney know that Celerie wasn’t doing well. She had been devastated by the news of Dabney’s illness, and she had had her heart set on making a career at the Chamber, which wouldn’t happen now. Agnes said that Celerie had taken to her bed, and could not be persuaded to leave her house.

“Took to her bed?” Dabney said. She had a hard time imagining Celerie lying down at all; the girl was always on the move. “Really?”

“She’s like your…groupie…your disciple,” Agnes said. “I mean, look at her, Mom. The headband? The pearls? Come on.”

Celerie was working the occasional catering job, but she had no long-term plan beyond volunteering as the cheerleading coach at the Boys & Girls Club. She was considering moving back to Minnesota.

Dabney decided to call Vaughan Oglethorpe. Clen was in the room when she did it.

Clen said, “I can’t believe you’re calling that grotesque zombie bastard.”

Dabney said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

And as it turned out, Vaughan was happy to hear from Dabney. He sounded as he had always sounded, prior to showing up in the office to fire Dabney—like an uncle hearing from his favorite, long-lost niece.

“Dabney!” he said. “Your voice is music to my ears.”

Dabney heard actual music—the heavy, doomed chords of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue—in the background. Funeral-parlor music. Anyone’s voice would be an improvement over that.

“I have a matter I’d like to discuss,” Dabney said.

“I hope you’re calling to tell me that you want your job back,” Vaughan said. “Because ever since I asked for your resignation, I’ve been itching to retract my words. The Chamber is nothing without you, Dabney. The second you walked out of there, it started falling apart. I had to hire a temp, and Elizabeth Jennings agreed to handle the phones, but only during hours that are convenient for her. I’m at a loss. I need you to come back. I can even offer you a pay raise.”

Dabney stifled a laugh. What Vaughan didn’t understand was that Dabney would have done her job all those years for half, or a quarter, of her salary. Hell, she would have done it for free.

“I’m not coming back, Vaughan,” she said. “I do have a suggestion for a new director, however.”

True, Celerie was young. But she had energy and enthusiasm and a fresh outlook. She was bright and she learned quickly. She had the fire. She also would have a direct line to Dabney. Dabney would consult with her until…

“Well,” Dabney said. “Until I’m not able to consult anymore.”

Vaughan made some phlegmy, throat-clearing noise that Dabney knew was meant to conceal his relief.

“Okay,” he said. “Have Celerie e-mail me her résumé. Pronto.”

  

Next, it was out to Celerie’s house—a sad little rental on Hooper Farm Road. As soon as Dabney pulled into the driveway, she realized that this was the house that her friends Moe and Curly used to rent. Moe and Curly had surfed at Madequecham Beach back when Dabney and Clen were in high school and college. Dabney had come to parties at this house; she had thrown up in the backyard after too many vodkas with grape soda.

Dabney chuckled as she walked up to the front door. She was Dabney now and she had been Dabney then, but they were two different people.

Sometimes life seemed very long.

And other times, not.

Dabney knocked, and Celerie opened the door right away. She was holding a paperback copy of Emma, by Jane Austen. She was wearing a short blue terry-cloth robe. And pearls. And the navy headband with the white stars.

Dabney knew she had been right to come.

Celerie’s mouth formed a tiny O of surprise, the way other girls her age might react to a visit from Justin Beiber, or the way Dabney’s grandmother, Agnes Bernadette, would have reacted to a visit from the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.

“That’s my favorite book, you know,” Dabney said.

“Yes,” Celerie said, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I know.”

“Can I come in and talk to you for a minute?” Dabney asked.

“Of course.” Celerie indicated the room before her, featuring a gray, tweedy-looking sofa, a large square rag rug, a boxy TV with rabbit-ear antennae, and a rotary phone. “We call this room the museum because nothing actually works.”

Dabney laughed. She could just barely smell the marijuana smoke of thirty years earlier, and see the hazy silhouettes of Moe and Curly and a girl they all called Meg the Drunk Slut, crowded around a red glass bong.

Celerie wiped at her eyes. “I just made a batch of watermelon lemonade. Can I offer you a glass?”

“Yes,” Dabney said. “I would love a glass of watermelon lemonade.”

Celerie vanished into the kitchen, which Dabney could see was outfitted with the same linoleum and Formica of three decades before. That refrigerator used to be filled with Miller beer and the dreaded vodka and Welch’s grape soda. Moe and Curly used to brag that they spent ten dollars a week on groceries, leaving the rest of their disposable income for booze, weed, and Sex Wax.

She was the only person she knew who salvaged such details.

Dabney sat on one end of the sofa; at the other end was a feather pillow that held the soft indentation of Celerie’s head.

Celerie returned with a pink frosty glass.

Dabney tasted the drink. “Delicious perfection!” she said, and Celerie actually smiled. She sat next to Dabney.

Dabney said, “First of all, I owe you an apology.”

“No,” Celerie said. “You don’t. I get it.”

“Well,” Dabney said, “you shouldn’t. You should be madder than hell at me. I skipped out on a lot of hours of work this summer. I cheated not only my husband, but I cheated Nantucket. I cheated you and Riley and I cheated poor Nina, leaving her to hold the office together.”

“You held the office together,” Celerie said. “Because it was like you were there even when you weren’t there.”

 “Thank you for saying that,” Dabney said. “But I didn’t come here so you could compliment me. I came here so I could compliment you. You did an incredible job this summer, once again. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better information assistant. Now, that being said, I have a question for you.”

“A question?” Celerie said. “What is it?”

“Would you—please—submit your résumé to Vaughan Oglethorpe? Today, if possible? I want you to apply to be the new executive director of the Nantucket Chamber of Commerce. I will guide and advise you for as long as I’m able.”

Celerie stood very still, and then she broke out in a war whoop and raised her hands in a V over her head.

“Yes!” she said.