THE AIR WAS full of water and Ruthie was drowning. Humid day had followed humid day. Floorboards swelled. Dogs panted. The water settled into Ruthie’s bones. She felt a tug like a current, sweeping her toward Joe, and it took all her will to resist it. She yearned for him. She could feel the word, yearn, like the plucking of a string.
A hurricane with an alarming tendency to wobble moved up the coast. Landfall was uncertain. Weather broadcasters had been blown sideways in the Carolinas, shouting of approaching doom.
People decided they needed bread and milk, even if they didn’t eat bread, and the country store was crowded. Everyone really just wanted to talk about the storm arriving and storms from the past. Sandy, of course. Irene, Floyd, the letdown that was Charley. There was no panic. These were Long Islanders. It was just a storm.
Ruthie bought her bread and her milk and left the market as quickly as she could. She was now in that peculiar place of being a source of gossip. She knew the gossip wasn’t unkind, that it was sympathetic, neighbors and friends angry or worried about what had happened, but since nobody knew what had happened, speculation reigned. She knew that a petition had gone around to reinstate her. She knew many had signed it, but she also knew that Mindy had come out swinging, making phone calls with one message: “It’s better for Ruthie and better for the museum if she goes,” a form of professional assassination that was not fully recognized as the slime it was. Some people wondered if she was ill, or had embezzled. She had disappeared so fast. With her severance and nondisclosure agreement in hand, she could say little to defend herself. Instead of a lump sum, severance was being paid monthly. Mindy controlled the strings. If she said anything to defend herself, or told the truth, she knew Mindy would cut them.
Mike and Adeline Clay were now a public couple. She had seen them eating ice cream cones at the pie shop, she had driven by them as they walked hand in hand, her own hand twitching to yank the wheel. Everyone knew, and it was either grace or caution that stopped them from bringing it up. Maybe she had started to look as feral as she felt.
ROBERTA VERONA’S ANNUAL Bastille Day dinner party was legendary, and this year Jem and Mike were invited to be houseguests along with Adeline and Lucas. They would each have their own room, Mike told Ruthie politely and pointedly. Adeline and Lucas in the main house, Jem and Mike in the guesthouse out back. Jem wanted to go.
Ruthie knew she was boxed in. Glamorous event, exquisite food, shiny people, Jem’s first grown-up dinner party. Jem was invited to come early and help with the cooking. Ruthie Googled the dinner, reading articles about past years in food and lifestyle magazines, the guests who came every year (artists, writers, chefs, a famous political comedian), the sprinkling of the new (musician, journalist, surfer). These were the kinds of things that kids of the privileged received, access to great talents and remarkable achievements, a sort of insider trading that is not about money, but minds. How could she say no when this was something she would give Jem if she could, these bright jewels, this glimpse of a life that could be hers?
“Can she go?” Mike asked.
Ah, now she knew what divorce really was. Sharing decisions with a person you would run down on the street.
RUTHIE WAS AT the beach at Pete’s Neck watching the whitecaps when she saw Carole’s name pop up on the phone. Her desperate voicemails had finally gotten through. Carole, Mindy basically fired me but I quit. Carole, have you talked to any members of the board? Carole, Mindy’s attorney is drafting a severance agreement and I don’t know if I should hire a lawyer. Do you know anyone who can take it on pro bono? Never mind about the attorney, Mindy’s lawyer gave me a deadline, so I signed it. It’s only for six months.
“Ruthie, it’s Carole, can you hear me?”
“Yes! I’m so glad you called! I’ve been—”
“Thank God I got you! I need you to do me a huge, huge favor.”
Carole had disappeared into the Neolithic wilds of the Hebrides and ignored her for days. Now she needed help.
If it were another friend Ruthie would communicate her disappointment, her hurt, but this was Carole, and Carole was a reference for her next job.
“Sure.” Her voice sounded like a chirp.
“We’re going to this event tonight. Le quatorze juillet and all that. This is what I get for insisting on packing for Lewis, the man is hopeless at it, if it were up to him he’d bring one suit. Anyway, I’m laying out his outfit and I just noticed that his watch isn’t in the case. I’ve looked everywhere.”
Ruthie felt a drop of rain hit her forehead. She jerked away as if it were burning oil, her hand to her chest. “His watch.”
“He bought it after his first major deal, it’s hugely expensive, he only wears it on big occasions—and I can’t find it! I have the case, just not the watch. It’s a vintage Patek Philippe. I don’t even want to tell you what he paid for it.”
You don’t have to.
“I’ve gone over and over this. I remember packing, and everything was just all over the bedroom, you know? Dash and Verity were fighting, and Verity had on my Louboutins and Dash had on Lewis’s Charvet tie, and I had a fit. Maybe I was busy yelling and the watch fell on the carpet and somebody kicked it or something? Would you look? If I lost that watch I’d never forgive myself and Lewis would never forgive me. Could you please, please look? Like, right this second?”
“I’m not at the house, but of course I will,” Ruthie said.
“Lifesaver! And what do you think about what’s going on at the museum? I just talked to Helen. Daniel Mantis is involved! Apparently he wrote a fifty-thousand-dollar check!”
Ruthie pressed the phone so hard against her head that it might have impressed itself upon her skull. “Daniel Mantis.”
“Apparently Mindy and Catha roped him in. It’s too bad it didn’t happen on your watch, but, really, it’s a great thing for the museum. Apparently his daughter is completely charming, too. Very artsy. I can’t wait to meet him.”
Daniel Mantis.
Daniel had lifted her wrist, had noticed the watch.
“Could you call me whether you find the watch or not, okay? Please please? I’m just sick about this. À bientôt.”
Ruthie hung up. She looked up at the scudding clouds, the lowering sky. “What the fuck!” she screamed.
When Carole returned, she would meet Daniel. Sooner or later the watch story would come up somehow, somewhere. Two watch-loving moguls, Daniel and Lewis! The tale of the missing rare vintage Patek Philippe with the minute repeater! And Daniel would remember her, arm outstretched to point to a Rothko.
The story would be spread through Orient and the Hamptons and move westward to Manhattan. People wouldn’t believe that she didn’t know it was real, wouldn’t quite believe that a casual offer to borrow a blouse meant she could strap Lewis’s watch on her wrist and strut around town. She would look like a fool and a cheat. And maybe they wouldn’t believe that it had simply gone missing. She was either careless or stupid or a thief.
She was all of those things.
She was tainted forever. She would know the meaning of the word ruined. She would know the meaning of the word shunned.