Laurel had seen all the bad press about the “teaspoon of crack cocaine” comment he’d made when Letterman asked him what was in his clams casino dip; she had read the statement issued by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America and had seen angry rantings against Deacon online, saying he was an emissary of Satan, glorifying drug use. Laurel acknowledged it was a poor choice of words, but, even as a social worker, she wasn’t offended. An emissary of Satan? Laurel couldn’t believe it when Deacon called saying that Belinda had eviscerated him and told him he was devaluing her “brand”-all because of some quip he’d made on late-night TV. Laurel assured Deacon that Belinda would be back; she was, as ever, simply being dramatic.

Later that night, Laurel received a second phone call from Deacon. He was at the police station near Washington Square Park. He had been arrested at Mischief Night, the restaurant owned by Quentin York. Deacon had thought it was a good idea to get really drunk and then show up at Mischief Night, bust in through the back door of the kitchen, and start teaching York’s staff how to cook. York had not been amused. He asked Deacon to leave, Deacon threw a punch, and York called the police.

Deacon said, Buck is on his honeymoon. I didn’t have anyone else to call.

Laurel retrieved Deacon from the police station, paid his fines, signed his paperwork, and got him back to his apartment, where she made him a pot of coffee and gave him aspirin. Neither of them slept that night. They talked and cried and talked some more, and at some point, they concocted the plan to get away together, to someplace neither of them had ever been. They wanted to go somewhere warm, somewhere tropical, somewhere low-key-and they decided on St. John.

“Deacon needed a friend,” Laurel said to Scarlett. “And I knew him best. Deacon was a very fragile man underneath it all.”

“I can’t believe it was you,” Scarlett said. “I asked him more than once, and he would never tell me who he took.”

This didn’t surprise Laurel. Deacon was good at keeping secrets.

She turned onto the road that led to the pond. There was a wide, crescent-shaped beach and a place to lock up the bikes. Laurel turned to make sure Scarlett was right behind her.

“I’m going to swim,” Laurel said.

“Me too,” Scarlett said.

“Are you wearing a bathing suit?” Laurel asked.

“No,” Scarlett said. “I’ll swim in my dress. I don’t care. I’m just so hot. And I’m so frazzled that I left my daughter in the care of a woman I don’t trust.”

“Ellery will be fine with Belinda,” Laurel said. “Belinda has two little girls the same age.”

“Who are being raised by a housekeeper,” Scarlett said.

Laurel headed out onto the golden sand, past beached kayaks and dories. On the far side of the pond, the lighthouse winked. There were kids building sand castles while their mothers read novels and unwrapped thick ham sandwiches from wax paper. People here were enjoying summertime just the way Laurel used to.

Laurel stripped down to her bikini and waded in. Scarlett was right alongside her, leaving her ruby-red slippers in the sand. Laurel had to admit, she was impressed. She would have thought Scarlett too prissy to swim in her dress.

They swam out together, matching stroke for stroke, which was a nice change from landlubber Belinda. Scarlett’s dress swirled around her in the water like blood. She came up with droplets of water caught in her long lashes.

“Why did you cut your hair?” Laurel asked.

Scarlett shrugged. “I did it as soon as I heard he was dead. He loved my hair, and what was the point of keeping it if he wasn’t around to appreciate it?”

Laurel didn’t know what to say. Scarlett Oliver’s very long, very dark tresses were her trademark. Laurel couldn’t believe she had butchered them. All she was left with now were her lashes, her cheekbones, her lips. Hayes had once made a comment about Scarlett being born in a male-fantasy factory. Laurel said, “You left for Savannah after…?”

“After Deacon went out, got drunk, and forgot Ellery at school,” Scarlett said. “Forgot his own daughter. He went to a strip club and persuaded one of the dancers there to let him drive her car up to Nantucket.”

“He told you about that?” Laurel said.

“Yes,” Scarlett said. “I knew there was no way he’d stayed at McCoy’s. Sarah, the bartender, knew what time Ellery got out of school because of all the other Tuesdays that Deacon went there to drink. She, at least, would have sent him on his way. When I pointed this out to Deacon and told him I was going to check out his story with Sarah, he broke down and confessed.”

“He told me nothing happened with the stripper,” Laurel said.

“Nothing happened except he was going to drive her up to Nantucket,” Scarlett said. “How could I not feel betrayed by that? And who knows if he was telling the truth? The whole time I was in Savannah, I kept waiting for him to call and say he’d gotten the girl pregnant. It was a betrayal, Laurel.”

Laurel knew the feeling only too well.

She had been in the apartment on West 119th Street, hanging out with Hayes after school. They had been looking at the globe. Hayes had been only seven years old, but even then he’d been fascinated by faraway countries: Malaysia, New Zealand, the Sudan. Deacon had walked into the apartment midafternoon, as usual. He went to Solo in the mornings to supervise prep, then came home and napped or watched TV and made love to Laurel before returning to the restaurant at five. On this day, Deacon had stood in the doorway watching Laurel and Hayes for a while. Normally when he did this, he wore an expression of love and wonder, as if he could not believe his great good fortune. Laurel felt this way all the time. She marveled at how they had changed from awkward freshmen sitting at the lunch table at Dobbs Ferry High School, into a small, perfect family. Laurel had been wondering how to broach the topic of having another baby. She feared Deacon would balk at the idea. He had taped three seasons of his show, Day to Night to Day with Deacon, and because of this, the world was starting to notice him. He had been asked to guest-chef in Chicago and L.A. He had been courted to join an all-star lineup at the food and wine festival in Aspen, although the invitation hadn’t included Laurel or Hayes. There was now the money for another baby, but maybe not the time.

On this day, Deacon’s expression was sad. As he walked across the hardwood floors toward them, he started to cry. Laurel looked up at him in panic. Had something happened? Had he lost his job? Had someone died?

“What’s wrong?” she said.

Deacon hugged Hayes. “Can you go in your room and watch some TV, buddy? I have to talk to your mom.”

Hayes had squared his small shoulders; he was Laurel’s sentinel, her guard. But he wasn’t brave enough to disobey his father, and so he skulked to his room in the back of the apartment.

“What’s wrong?” Laurel said again. “What happened?”

“Laurel,” Deacon said. He sat next to her on the floor and took both her hands.

Laurel had known something bad was coming, but she had not predicted the nature of this bad.

I’ve met someone else, I’ve fallen in love, I didn’t mean for it to happen, it just did. It’s Belinda Rowe. I met her briefly in Los Angeles, and then a couple of weeks later, she came to New York to film and she tracked me down. I’ve been seeing her for four months. Now she’s headed back to L.A., and she wants me to go with her. I’ve thought long and hard about it, and I’m going to do it. I’m leaving, Laurel. I’m going to L.A. with Belinda Rowe. I want a divorce.

Laurel had studied her husband. He was wearing a black T-shirt, jeans, a pair of black Chuck Taylors. His dark hair fell into his eyes; he had a three-day scruff, which looked sexy on him, but then Laurel realized that he’d started maintaining the scruff about three months earlier. He also wore a heavy silver watch with a dark-blue, pearlescent face, a TAG Heuer, which Deacon said he had bought for himself, a splurge. Laurel had been puzzled and a little miffed at this spontaneous purchase. They had two mortgages-the apartment and the Nantucket house-and Hayes’s private-school tuition to pay for. Their lifestyle didn’t include spending three or four thousand dollars on a watch, but Laurel had eventually rationalized the watch as Deacon rewarding himself. He hadn’t had any nice things growing up.

Belinda Rowe? Laurel said. She was utterly perplexed. The movie star?

Deacon’s eyes lit up before he could help himself, and for this-then, and still now, almost thirty years later-Laurel hated him.

Yes, he said. She wants me, Laurel.

I want you, Laurel said. You’re my husband. You’re my… She couldn’t even come up with a word. She had been with Deacon since she was fifteen years old. She had never even held hands with anyone else. He was her beginning and-she’d thought-her end. He was her everything… My whole world, she said. Then she realized how puny and small that made her sound. She didn’t have a fraction of the sophistication of Belinda Rowe.

Deacon hugged her tightly, and Laurel let him as tears-the realest, saddest tears she had ever cried in her life-wet the front of his T-shirt. She faced the cruel reality that one person’s want was more valuable than another person’s want.


Laurel and Scarlett had swum out to the center of the pond, almost without Laurel’s noticing. She rarely allowed herself to go back to that day in her mind. She thought, with renewed vigor, that she didn’t have one iota of guilt about going to St. John with Deacon.

Laurel reached for Scarlett’s hand and, although they were treading water, they embraced.

“I’m sorry,” Laurel whispered. She telescoped up, up, up, like a camera taking an increasingly wide angle, until she pictured herself as Deacon in the sky, gazing down at the lighthouse, the golf course, the beach, with its crescent of golden sand, and Sesachacha Pond, in which swam two of his wives-his first and his last-comforting each other about the pain he had caused them.


Intermezzo: Deacon and Belinda, Part II

He can’t stand the sight of her. She is imperious, selfish, and a control freak, even when she’s half a world away. She is petty. She resents how close Deacon is to Angie, and so whenever she’s home in New York, she takes Angie on exclusive mother-daughter outings-to the Village to buy jeans, to the theater to see Rent, to MoMA for a Van Gogh exhibit. Deacon suggests the three of them do something as a family, but Belinda will have none of it. She says, “The two of you will ignore me.”

When Angie is eleven, Scarlett is twenty-four, and she tells Deacon and Belinda that she’s quitting in order to pursue a career in photography. She’s had a camera in her hand nonstop for the past few years, taking pictures of Angie to send to Belinda when she’s on location. And now, she wants to turn the hobby into something more serious.

Belinda sets up an interview for her with Annie Leibovitz, and Annie gives Scarlett an internship.

“Good for Scarlett,” Deacon says.

Belinda says, “She only took the job as our nanny so that I would help her when the time came.”

“She was with us for six years,” Deacon says. “She paid her dues and then some.”

“She owes me,” Belinda says, and Deacon sighs. Belinda keeps score in every relationship; it turns his stomach.


Angie is fourteen, a freshman at Chapin. She has a friend who lives on Ninety-Fourth and Fifth named Pierpont. Angie spends way too much time with Pierpont, who is a fast, privileged, egregiously snooty girl. Is there anything Deacon can do to get Angie away from Pierpont? When he is in New York, he brings her to work at the restaurant. She’s a natural, always has been. She wants to be a chef just like him, she says.

One Friday night, Pierpont gets drunk on grain alcohol and loses her virginity to some douche bag named Chas, a senior at Collegiate. Pierpont shows up at the Waldorf Towers at two in the morning, crying. Deacon is home with Angie; Belinda is in L.A.

Deacon sits up with the girls all night. He makes omelets and lots of toast and listens to Pierpont weep-and then vomit. In the morning, Deacon calls Belinda and says there have to be some changes. Belinda has to put her career on hold; she needs to come home and parent. She wanted a baby so badly-but since Angie has been in their care, she has come second to Belinda’s career.

Belinda is outraged. She can’t come back to New York! She has just started filming the series Boarding for HBO, and she has a contract for three seasons. She is also playing opposite Philip Seymour Hoffman and James Gandolfini in a film called Cryin’ to the Devil, which is being shot in Burbank. Moving to New York isn’t realistic this year and probably not next year either.