NET-A-NEWPORT 4H
Submitted via NetaNewport.com
From: annon pls
Subject: sell off
everyone’s favorite bellevue avenue queen is not happy with the way her summer is going. press was supposed to be about her and her son. but the reporters are only interested in her daughter in law and her family. like, sorry, but what did she expect? no one cares about the groom.
“Is this the last of it?” I asked as River settled into the winged back of what we, as children, had always called Lewie chairs. He’d arrived in my room in the Cottage with three nitro-cold brews and the final box from the storage unit.
“Indeed,” River said, crossing his ankles on the stool. “And I closed Mrs. Gilford’s account at the u-Store. No more charges on her card after this month.” He handed me the mark-up of the auction preview party catalog. “Sotheby’s requested edits be returned by tomorrow so we can have them all printed by next week.”
I finished up my email to Reagan, ending it with a neutral Best, Cass sign-off. All in all, I thought I did a fairly nice job of providing dispassionate, bordering on bullshit answers to her questions. I could only hope this would put the issue of The Land to rest.
“How was the meeting with the caterers?” I asked, pushing aside my laptop, where I’d been editing photos from the Moët event, and flipping through the catalog. Those little saucers with radishes my mother and I had used for doll tea parties were actually a pair of trompe l’oeil Strasbourg plates from the prized Paul Hannong era (1750-1754) and that the starting bid would be three thousand US dollars. The mural that had once adorned The Land’s breakfast room that I’d woken up to for years was a 1920s watercolor mural from a Loire Valley château. I’d been the one to deface it with permanent marker on the eve of my tenth birthday. I’d been the reason it had been taken down and not conveyed to Susie. Starting bid: four thousand US dollars.
“I will say this—you should’ve come to the menu tasting. Hope’s not not still mad at you,” River revealed. “But she has ceased muttering about you two every time I see her, which I figure is the first sign of détente.”
“I appreciate your honesty. Though I think I best stay put until Hope’s anger has fizzled all the way out.” I handed the papers back to him. “I still think the phrase prestigious pedigree is awful, but whatever. I’ve been overruled. Other than that, it looks fine.”
A text from Spencer swooped into my phone. This is your next license plate!
The picture was taken over his dashboard, stopped at a light. The car in front of him had chosen XraGuac as their vanity message.
“I’m glad we decided to feature Newport’s resort-era time capsule on the first page,” said River, tucking the invitation into his leather messenger bag. “It was very smart of you and Sotheby’s to get people to bid on it at the preview party. Fabulous publicity!”
“That was Archer and Hope’s idea. At least my mother is still talking to him.”
Swim in the pool tonight? I asked Spencer.
I’ll never say no to a sexy swim. Grabbing my snorkel and flippers now!
River ran his finger over the carved bleached wood of the chair’s arm, and gingerly continued. “I do have to tell you, at the caterers yesterday, after we indulged in surf and turf, Mrs. Utterback and Mrs. Coventry-Gilford—and I blame the wine included in the tasting for this—exchanged some sharp words. It started innocuous enough. There was confusion about chargers.”
“Phone?”
“No, dining. As in, the layer that goes underneath the dinner plate.”
“The placemat.”
“No. The—” River made sweeping and patting motions.
“Right.” I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Did Hope choose the beef or the fish?”
“Both. She wants a little duet on the plate. In the back of Mrs. Coventry-Gilford’s mind, the venue is free, so it allows her to spend money on other things. And she’s saying, now, Oh, the auction will bring in such and such funds. Never fear, though! Jack is talking her out of most of it.”
“That’s something, then.” I refocused on the box in my lap, extracting a bubble-wrapped object, one I hadn’t seen in a dozen years. I located the place where a piece of tape held the bubble wrap together, snipped it with my nail.
River slid onto the floor next to me. “Wow,” he said. “I’ve only seen Fiona Coventry-Devries in the Frick. Never this close.”
Gradually, the sculpture appeared: Granny Fi’s assemblage of a white bra and girdle made from found objects, trash, detritus pulled from the garbage or the side of the road or the breakwater below The Land. It was the size of a child’s torso, and it rested on a base made from pieces of broken tiles and those crystal glasses that once matched the pitcher I’d seen in Hope’s truck last month. I spun the work around, admiring its texture and proportion. My fingers ran over where she’d fashioned a bra clasp out of fishhooks and lobster pot wire. The piece was prickly, pointy, some might call it ugly or weird, but it had always been my favorite.
Artist to artist, my grandmother had written in a short note given to me by our family’s old attorney at her funeral. “Granny Fi was the first love of my life,” I said.
Now that it was out of the box and into the beams of light stretching in from the windows, I realized how much I’d missed seeing her work in person. How the work, seemingly, had missed being where it belonged.
“Sotheby’s did ask again...” River said.
“I told them I’d think about it.” Yesterday I’d made Hope return all the items she’d taken out of the storage unit. Some subcontractor of the auction house had then come to u-Store, movers in white cotton gloves, tagging and labeling, carting lots off in crates. The lead handler, a tall man with a wrestler’s physique, a therapist’s soft voice, and a very sturdy clipboard had reminded us that, upon final accounting, we were still two lots short of what we’d promised, and we were just over three weeks away to the auction, and one to the preview party. What would the appraising eyes of Sotheby’s see in this sculpture? Value. Quality. A collector’s jewel, perhaps. A sample of a particular artistic genius, maybe. But to me, it wasn’t an object, but a reminder of the moments I shared with my Granny.
“Think about what?” In Archer strode, wearing his classic summer uniform of board shorts and a tee, today capped off with a white terry-cloth bathrobe I recognized from the pool house. His ankles were sandy and his hair salt-cured; I assumed he’d been surfing. He leaned against the fireplace, jangled the ice in his cup, and noticed the item before us. “Oh, Granny Fi’s sculpture?”
“Sotheby’s wants me to sell it,” I told him.
“And you’re pulling a Hope Coventry-Gilford, and holding tight.”
I bristled. “I don’t have a mountain of Granny Fi’s belongings. I have this. This one thing.”
Archer positioned his straw at the corner of his mouth and slipped. “You know Granny Fi deliberately broke the stuff Mom liked, right? She got off on it.”
Credulous of this, it only threw me for a moment. “She did not get off on it. Assemblage was her medium. Besides, there’s not one thing in the Coventry collection that Mom doesn’t love. If Granny Fi touched nothing, she’d have no art.”
“Okay,” Archer said, done with me, his attention and two thumbs on his phone. “Sure.”
I almost demanded he tell me what he was always up to on there, what was more important than talking to me—a video, a post, what? I even began: “Who are you tex...” Then I thought, Lord help me, I really am turning into my mother.
Luckily, River cleared his throat. “This is my first time up here,” he said, taking in the bedroom’s surrounds. “It’s very—”
“Blue,” I observed. When Susie had moved me in last week, I’d been assigned to what had been, in its past life, Archer’s bedroom, and now was covered, ceiling to walls, bolster pillows to bedspread, in Susie’s favorite shade of robin’s egg toile.
Missing the house, feeling cheated of it, could easily become a bad habit if I weren’t careful. Something to be picked at, like a hangnail. I was staying at The Land for the summer, but I could not worship at the altar of misfortune. There was no use looking back. Keep it moving.
“I was about to say anachronistic,” River said. “The Coventrys would’ve never decorated with toile.” The way he said the word, like it tasted foul, had me chuckling. “Damask, sure. Gold leaf, yes.”
“My bed,” Archer said, surfacing from his screen, pointing at the wall opposite the fireplace, “was over there, not next to the door where it is now. Do you remember, Cass?”
“I do.” With care, I repackaged Granny Fi’s sculpture, safely returned it to its box. Then I shot Maggie a text that River had brought her a green juice.
“I spent a lot of time in this room,” Archer said thoughtfully.
“Archer, your experience with lympho—I’m so sorry—” River put his hand to his neck. “What was it?”
“ALK-negative anaplastic large cell lymphoma.” I sucked two big gulps of coffee. My mouth was suddenly arid. “Stage two.”
“Right, forgive me. I imagine it would’ve been quite lonely. While my father was undergoing treatment for prostate cancer while I was in high school, he often said that it was the silence from those he expected to hear from that was one of the most physically painful parts of the ordeal.”
“People don’t know what to say, so they say nothing,” said Archer, and it was forgiving. “But those who mattered showed up. Remember Maggie auctioned off those dance lessons? And, Cassie, honestly, how many hours did you sit with me here before it got really bad and Mom, Dad, and I had to go to MD Andersson for my last round?”
Yes, those many hours, the heavy, dusty curtains drawn against the light. Those jaundice-colored days of gauze and barf buckets and doctors who Hope called fucking idiots and J.P. called sawbones to make us all laugh. Archer had always been angelic in his rest despite his pallor, the inflamed pink of his eyelids, his skinniness. I’d felt helpless and lacking, and furious with everyone else in the wide world who were not suffering as we were. As he was.
Maggie, the chameleon, was better than I was at making and keeping friends during this time. She had her dance and distance learning community (the hours devoted to the barre precluded her from normal school); I had to brave the halls of Rogers High. With a name like ours, one could only suppose I should be bathing in San Pellegrino. Why, then, did my trousers have patches over the knees? Why, then, did I know the names of all the repo men in town?
Archer had gotten better. But I’d gotten worse, as though Granny Fi’s death, the months without my parents, the loss of The Land, and Maggie’s increased focus on Jack and dance were rays from a dying star, only reaching me long after the final implosion.
Don’t waste time feeling bad for me. Archer and Maggie lost their grandmother and their home, too. Archer almost lost his life. And I was the only one who’d skipped class to smoke under the bleachers, stole the lawn mower from the custodial shed, and mowed BLOW ME in the soccer field.
“I didn’t do much,” I said, smushing my straw against the ice in my cup.
“You would pick strands of hair off my pillow so I wouldn’t cry when I saw them the next morning.”
I met his eyes. “You faker,” I said, touched. “I thought you were asleep.”
Archer smiled. “Surprise.”
“You lived,” I said.
“Sure did.” Archer exhaled. “And now I live in my phone.”
“Except the game theory club you do with the high schoolers!” I reminded him. “Which is so generous of you. I need to start volunteering more...”
River had wandered to the double-hung window overlooking The Land’s driveway and flagpole. “Alas.” He motioned for us. “It’s starting again.”
Concerned, I rose from the floor, Archer not far behind me. That’s when I heard shouting.
I unlocked the sash and lifted the window up as high as it would go. Hope and Susie were on the driveway directly below facing each other, their bodies silos of tension, their voices a mishmash of indignation.
“The moms are back on their bullshit.” My pulse spiking, I moved out of the way so Archer could take my place.
“Remy is going to be coming down that driveway any minute,” Archer said, frowning at the commotion below. “I don’t need him driving straight into Jurassic Park! I’m trying to convince him to stay with me, not run for the hills.”
“I’m sure Remy is well versed in the feud,” I told my brother. “But don’t worry. I’m rounding up the reinforcements.”
Maggie still hadn’t returned my text, but I decided to try her on FaceTime; it rang and rang and she answered just when I thought all hope was lost.
“Hey,” she said, monotone.
“Where are you?” She appeared to be lying down, but not on a bed, her hair spread around, her chin sunk into her neck.
“I’m in the basement studio. Susie was nice and put marley flooring down so I could have a place to train.”
“Are you training?”
“No.”
I had thought that by moving into the Cottage, we would be able to see even more of each other. I had silly little ideas in my head like cozy pajama sibling time with Netflix and chips in bed. Though I had my time occupied with the auction, photo gigs, and editing, I couldn’t help feel slightly paranoid that Maggie had been dodging Archer and me in the week since we’d moved in. I’d be upstairs, in the room next to hers and Jack’s, texting Spencer or getting dressed for the day, when I’d hear footsteps in the carpeted hall, or the sound of one of the antique doorknobs clicking home, but when I rushed to catch her, it would just be Kent with a coffee for Susie, or a workman in a tool belt, there to fix a pipe, or caulk around a window, or—in one case—get rid of the ants. When I nosed about the kitchen in the mornings, Kent would say she was still asleep, then inch a bowl of perfectly shaped fresh fruit toward me. Even the bananas dared not be bruised in Susie’s kitchen. Just about to take a nap, she’d text when I got back to the Cottage in the evening. Busy day and I’m exhausted. Dinners were not taken together.
I glanced at Archer. He shrugged. “Okay. Well, do you hear Mom and Susie yelling? They’re out front.”
“Maybe. Or that might be the humidifier humming, I can’t tell.”
“Something about caps.” River turned from the window to deliver his report. “Is there a cap or a hat in dispute? Does this ring any bells?”
“I’m not speaking to Hope presently,” I said to Maggie, “and because this is your mom and mother-in-law, I think you should be the one to break it up.”
Maggie groaned. “Can’t Archer do it?”
Archer was shaking his head so vigorously I thought it might spin clear around. “He says no. Bug, you’re up.” I didn’t bother keeping the impatience out of my voice. I was pretending to be pregnant for her. She needed to get off the ground.
“A capsule!” River had his finger in the air like ah-HA! “Hope is saying they’ve given the capsule to the auction house and if Susie wants it she’ll have to pay like the rest of them.”
“Where’s Jack?” Archer asked.
“With the florist. If Susie wants something from the auction, just give it to her. Who cares?” Maggie asked.
“You should,” I said with ballooning annoyance. “This is raising money for your wedding.”
“This wedding,” Maggie said, the second syllable sliding out of her mouth in a fatigued breath. “Honestly?” She threw her arm over her eyes. “I doubt Jack even wants to marry me anymore. But he has to. Because of the baby.”
“Maggie’s bridal breakdown,” said Archer. “Right on schedule.”
The thought of my sister and this baby—my niece? nephew?—being a burden to Jack was outlandish, but I knew if I opened my mouth, I’d bite her head off. Instead, I marched over to join River and Archer by the window, passed my brother my phone, then cupped both hands around my mouth. “Moms!” I hollered. No effect. I leaned too forward for comfort and tried once more. “MOMS!” This got their attention. Both faces swung up; Susie shielded her eyes from the sun with—yes—seemed to be the same draft catalog River had distributed to me. “Stop fighting!”
“You need to turn the capsule over to me, Cass! Could be valuable Newport history in there! Or something important to The Land!” shouted Susie. Her aggravation carried. “It wasn’t your right to dig it up to begin with!”
“I know! But if I hadn’t, it would still be underground, forgotten!” This was my first debate to take place over two stories.
“Cass found it!” This was Hope. “Finders keepers!”
Susie: “Finders on my property!”
Hope: “You wouldn’t be here if not for us!”
Susie: “That’s ludicrous! After all I’ve done!”
Hope: “You want us here! You like to look over from your perfect mansion that you bought with your husband’s money and see the Coventrys small and beneath you. You’re not fooling anyone about why you leased us that house!”
A tremendous, heavy silence from Susie. Then: “I can’t wait till you’re out of here.”
“Joke’s on you, Susie, because I plan to live to one hundred.”
I maneuvered backward, then used my forearm to slam the window closed. “This isn’t super.” I sounded very calm, even though the agreement I’d made with Susie earlier this summer was one capsule-length away from disintegrating. Would she evict Hope on the spot?
River glanced toward the drive. “I see Remy’s car. Dare I try and run past the moms to intercept him?”
“How’s your army crawl?” Archer asked.
“I’m wearing a linen blend,” said River.
“Maggie,” said Archer, turning his attention to the phone. “We need you, buddy. You’ve got to get them apart.”
Maggie closed her eyes, and mouthed what I thought were the words oh, no. “What do I even say?”
I obviously didn’t help de-escalate the situation, so I looked at my brother. “Archer,” I said, “I’ve heard the way you talk to people online. You’re good at this. Help her. Please?”
Archer paused, then nodded. His voice, when he spoke, became lower and more deliberate. “You don’t have to say anything. Just go, get Susie, and lead her inside. She’ll be mad, but that’s okay,” he continued, conjuring a prospect of resolution out of thin air. “Let her get it out. She’s got her reasons for being furious, and you don’t have to solve them, you just have to be there.”
Maggie took a beat, then the angle of the FaceTime shifted as she appeared to sit up. “Okay. I’m on my way.”
Archer ended the call and gave me my phone. “You’re amazing,” I said. “Now can you tell us what do we do about Hope?”
Archer opened the window again. Remy had parked; Hope waved at him as she made her way back to the carriage house, singing: “The gilded cage is so much more interesting with the birds still in it!” This was accompanied by feet shuffles and taps.
“I think she’ll be fine,” he said.