Elin Hilderbrand - The Matchmaker

Agnes smiled at him. Pink, rosy, she and Riley Alsopp? She briefly imagined what being in a relationship with Riley would be like, and the first word that came to her mind was easy. Did she want easy? She couldn’t believe she was thinking this way. She was engaged to CJ, and just because she was angry with him did not mean she could pair off with someone else, even cute, easy Riley Alsopp. She said, “How was your date with Celerie?”

“Unequivocal disaster. She got really drunk and threw up.”

Agnes said, “Jeez, I might be next. I’ve had a lot of wine.”

Riley said, “It wasn’t her drinking or puking that was the problem. There was just a disconnect. Lack of chemistry. On my end, anyway. The problem is that I have to sit next to her all day long and I can tell she’s just waiting for me to ask her out again.”

“But you’re not going to?”

“I’m not going to.”

Agnes grabbed his hand. “Let’s follow my mother.”

“What?”

She pulled him up. “We’re going to follow my mother. She’s keeping a secret.”

Riley trailed Agnes out of the restaurant and onto the street. “What kind of secret?”

“She goes somewhere. She’s hiding something. That night, when she was supposed to be at Business After Hours…?”

“Yeah,” Riley said. “Where was she?”

“She came home at ten o’clock. She wouldn’t tell me where she’d been.”

Agnes hurried along Federal Street, then turned up Main. She saw Dabney across the street, half a block ahead of them.

“I bet you a million bucks when she gets to our house, she climbs into the Impala and drives off.”

“You think?”

“We’re going to follow her,” Agnes said. “In my Prius.”

“You drive a Prius?” Riley asked. “How do you like it?”

Agnes rolled her eyes. Everyone asked her that. “It’s fine. Great on gas.”

In Agnes’s Prius, they stalked Dabney up Main to Fair, and then up Fair to Charter. On Charter, Agnes held Riley back. They couldn’t get too close to the house.

“I bet she gets right into the car,” Agnes whispered.

Dabney did not get into the Impala. She opened the gate and entered the house through the side door. Agnes thought perhaps she’d gone to grab her keys. She waited. The light came on in Dabney’s bedroom.

Agnes suddenly became aware that she and Riley were holding hands-like, really holding hands, with their fingers entwined. Riley had warm, strong, dentist’s hands.

Riley stroked Agnes’s thumb with his thumb.

Agnes pulled her hand away. If CJ could see them right now, Agnes thought, he would have hired a hit man. She shivered, remembering what had happened with her hair. She said, “Riley, I’m engaged. To be married.”

Riley cleared his throat. “I know,” he said. And then in a softer, sadder voice: “I’m sorry.”

The light in Dabney’s bedroom went out. Agnes held her breath, certain that her mother would emerge. But she didn’t. The house and the street were quiet. The mystery remained unsolved.

Agnes got out of her car and walked toward the house. She felt deflated. No one in her life was cooperating. “Good night, Riley,” she said.

Clendenin

The cleaning lady for the house he was caretaking, Irene Scarpilo, gave her notice. Irene’s daughter was pregnant with twins; Irene was moving to Plymouth to be closer to her.

“I need a new cleaning lady,” Clen said to Dabney.

“Consider it done,” Dabney said.

Clen squeezed her. They were sitting side by side on the first point of Coatue. They had driven out in the economist’s beat-up Wagoneer. They were eating lobster rolls that Dabney had prepared. The sandwiches were delicious and the day was sparkling, but they were both in a somber mood. The economist was returning that evening.

“What are you doing for the Fourth?” Dabney asked.

“I have a party,” Clen said.

“Really?” Dabney said. She sounded surprised-and for good reason. Clen hadn’t been anywhere or seen anyone but Dabney since he’d been back.

Elizabeth Jennings had invited Clen to her annual bash on the Cliff. Elizabeth and her husband, Mingus, had been in Vietnam with Clen for a half-dozen years or so before Mingus died. Mingus had been the Washington Post bureau chief, and Elizabeth had been the consummate ex-pat wife. She had gone along for every adventure, and had thrown parties for homesick Americans at their flat in the French Quarter of Hanoi. Clen had shared Thanksgiving with the Jenningses for a number of years. Somehow, Elizabeth had always gotten her hands on a turkey. Now, Elizabeth was back in the States, living in Georgetown, and on Nantucket in the summer.

“Whose party?” Dabney asked.

Clen thought she sounded jealous.

“Elizabeth Jennings? She lives on the Cliff?”

“Oh my God,” Dabney said.

“You’re going.”

“We’re going. Elizabeth is a board member of the Chamber, and we’ve gone to her party for the past three years. Box is coming home from Washington especially for it.”

How Clen loathed the use of the pronoun we when it pertained to Dabney and the economist.

“How do you know Elizabeth?” Dabney asked.

“I knew her husband overseas.” Clen paused, thinking it was probably best to tread lightly. “Mingus and I worked together in Saigon first, and then Hanoi. He was my partner in crime.”

“Sounds dangerous,” Dabney said.

“Did you ever know Mingus?” Clen asked.

“No. I’ve only known Elizabeth a few years, since she bought the house. She set out to meet everyone who was anyone on Nantucket. She’s a bit of a social climber, I think.”

“Oh,” Clen said. He had always been fond of Elizabeth. Clen and Mi Linh and Elizabeth and Mingus had vacationed together in Hoi An, among the three-hundred-year-old Chinese buildings carved from teak, with a thousand colored paper lanterns strung across the cobblestoned streets. They used to take café au lait on the terrace at the Cargo Club, and sometimes leisurely boat rides down the river in the evenings. Hoi An was a magical place. Elizabeth would photograph the Vietnamese children and then give out pencils and candy and bubble gum. Keeping the Vietnamese dentists in business, Mingus used to say. It was hard for Clen to reconcile the woman he had known in Vietnam to the woman who now hosted parties at her summer house on Cliff Road. It was like she had an Eastern and a Western persona. He supposed the same was true of him.

“If you and the economist are going,” Clen said, “then I should probably stay home.”

“Don’t be silly,” Dabney said.

“I’m not being silly,” Clen said. “We can’t all go.”

Dabney did not refute this.

But when the afternoon of the Fourth rolled around, Clen decided he would go to the party after all. He had gotten used to seeing Dabney every day, but he hadn’t seen her the day before and he wouldn’t see her the day after, or the day after that. Maybe Sunday, she’d said, if she could get away.

He was going to Elizabeth Jennings’s house because he missed Dabney and wanted to put his eyes on her.

He wore his blue seersucker suit, which he’d had custom-tailored in Hanoi in the months after he’d won the Pulitzer. One sleeve of the jacket hung limp as an air sock on a still day. Clen didn’t like parties because some drunk was always sure to ask about his arm.

Khmer Rouge, he would say. Machete.

The drunk’s eyes would pop. Really?

Yeah. Boring story.

The party started in the front yard, where everyone lined up to be photographed on the front porch by Elizabeth. She no longer used the old Leica she’d had in Vietnam; now, it was something fancy and digital.

The last thing in the world he wanted was to have his picture taken. He looked to the left and the right, wondering if he could skirt Elizabeth and her camera and enter the house from the side door. He wanted to get to the bar. Elizabeth, being a Washington hostess and the wife of a prominent journalist, would have good scotch.

Clen looked up in time to see Dabney and the economist smile for Elizabeth’s camera. Clen felt a wave of some nasty emotional cocktail-jealousy, anger, sorrow, longing. There they were together, a couple. Dabney was wearing a red silk halter dress that wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen her in. She had on red high heels. The dress and shoes were pretty and stylish, but she didn’t look like Dabney. She was, however, wearing pearls, and a navy headband with white stars, and she was carrying her Bermuda bag. The economist looked old-the white hair, the glasses, the double-breasted navy blazer as though he were the commodore of the Yacht Club (Was he the commodore? Clen wondered), the look of smug superiority because he had just spent the last week behind closed doors with the president and the Treasury secretary.

You’re going to tell him, right? Clen had asked.

Yes, she had said. Once he gets back. Once he gets back and settled in. I’m going to tell him. I have to tell him.

After the photo was taken, the economist held the door open for Dabney, and she disappeared inside.

Clen thought to go home, but he couldn’t leave her.

He was impossible to miss-big, tall, bearded fellow with only one arm. Elizabeth Jennings had been leading him around all night, showing him off, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Clendenin Hughes. They had known each other in Vietnam, Elizabeth trilled. Can you imagine? Then she went on to hit the Clendenin Hughes highlights: the series about the Khmer Rouge, the tyranny in Myanmar, the best coverage of the caning of Michael Fay, the Thaksin debacle in Bangkok.

Box turned away. Elizabeth Jennings had no idea that Hughes had impregnated Dabney. If she had known this, she would never have invited all three of them to this party.

Dabney was talking to the Massachusetts congressman (D) by the raw bar. The guy was a windbag, but he had worked with Dabney on keeping chain retailers off Nantucket, and she was forever indebted, and thus had to listen to him detail his woes with the Steamship Authority. Box tried to swoop in to rescue her, in the process helping himself to a few oysters. Good food and better wine here at Elizabeth’s. And a glorious view across Nantucket Sound. It was a clear night, ideal for the fireworks. The secretary had tried to get Box to stay in D.C. and attend the celebration on the Mall, but Box found that he was happy to be on Nantucket.

He gave up on Dabney. He feared she might do the sorority bump-and-roll-hand Box over to the tedious congressman and disappear into the crowd.

Box fixed himself a plate of fried chicken and ribs and coleslaw and corn salad and then wandered into the living room. Cocktail parties weren’t really his thing anymore; they were too much work. People who knew who he was approached him with an agenda, and people who didn’t know who he was tended to bore him. Dabney thought him a terrible snob, but he was sixty-two years old and had, quite frankly, earned the right.

He had tried to get Agnes to come to the party; the evening would have been far superior with her there, besides which he had barely seen her since he’d been back. But she had been headed to Jetties Beach to watch the fireworks with some fellow who worked for Dabney at the Chamber. Box wondered aloud if this was a date-Agnes seemed to be going to a lot of trouble making a picnic-and he also wondered what had happened to CJ. Agnes said, “No, Daddy, not a date, we’re just friends, and Celerie is coming, too. I’m actually kind of chaperoning. It’s a long story.”

Box didn’t like long stories, especially not those related to scheming romance. That was Dabney’s territory.

CJ, Agnes said, was spending the holiday in a luxury box at Yankee Stadium. He had wanted Agnes to come down to the city, but Agnes had work the next day, so that wasn’t really practical, and Box agreed.

“Have fun,” he said. And Agnes gave him an extra-long hug and said, “Mom and I are so glad you’re home. We missed you so much.”

Box wondered about this.

He was sipping a very nice Louis Jadot Chardonnay when Clendenin Hughes walked into the room with a full tumbler of scotch. Hughes saw Box and stopped short. He executed a half turn, as if to leave the room. Box couldn’t blame him, but he didn’t want to let Hughes escape. This was too rich an opportunity.

“Excuse me!” Box called out. He stood. “Mr. Hughes?”

Despite his size-he had at least six inches on Box-Hughes looked very young at that moment. Young and vulnerable, and of course he had only the one arm. Box reminded himself to proceed civilly.

“Professor,” Hughes said. At least he wasn’t pretending not to know who Box was.