Elin Hilderbrand - The Matchmaker

During her walk, she called Clen.

He said, “Jesus, woman, when am I going to see you?”

She said, “I was free yesterday at five, but you had plans. What plans?”

He said, “That I can’t tell you.”

She said, “Elizabeth Jennings?”

He said, “I hate to tell you this, Cupe, but you sound jealous.”

“I am jealous,” she said. “What were the plans?”

“I can’t tell you,” he said. “But it wasn’t Elizabeth. She did, however, drop off a homemade blueberry pie on my porch with a little note.”

“Homemade pie? Elizabeth?” Dabney said. “Her chef probably made it.”

“Jealous and catty!” Clen said. He sounded delighted.

“I can come today at five, “ Dabney said. “Or do you have plans again?”

“No plans,” he said. “Except to devour you.”

Dabney went to see Clen at five, but she had to do so under the auspices of going to the salon to get her hair cut. She figured this bought her an hour and a half, which she and Clen desperately needed. She listened to his voice in her ear, she tasted his skin, she felt him squeeze her-it hurt! But squeeze harder!-and it was just like she had never been apart from him. He was hers, she was his, they were one.

But then the countdown began. They had fifteen minutes left, then ten, then five.

“Will you miss me?” she asked.

“I miss you already,” he said.

As Dabney gathered her car keys, she watched the storm cloud cross his face, which exactly matched the shadow over her heart. She hated to leave him.

“I have to tell Box,” she said. “I want to be with you all the time.”

“So tell Box,” he said.

She nodded. “I will.” And then she thought, I can’t.

She had asked Clen again what his plans had been the day before at five o’clock and he had again declined to say, calling her a nosey parker. Her gut told her it was Elizabeth Jennings and Clen just didn’t want to admit it, but they had such a good time together that Dabney didn’t want to spoil it in a tug-of-war of accusation and denial.

He deserved his privacy, she thought. Though she didn’t believe this.

When she arrived home, Box studied her hair with narrowed eyes. “It looks the same,” he said.

“My hair always looks the same,” Dabney said. “It’s looked exactly the same since the fourth grade, when my grandmother bought me my first headband. Pink grosgrain ribbon with navy-blue whales, purchased at Murray’s Toggery.” Dabney narrowed her eyes right back at him. “God, I remember that day so vividly. Why do you think that is? Because of the headband? My grandmother didn’t spend money on pretty things, but she bought me that headband to keep the hair out of my eyes and I was thrilled with it.”

Box moved in closer, then lifted a lock of her hair and sniffed it. “It doesn’t smell like it usually does when you get back from the salon.”

Dabney swatted him away. “What are you talking about?”

“Your hair doesn’t have the salon smell and it looks the same as when you left.”

Dabney couldn’t believe this. Box had never before noticed the “salon smell” of her hair.

He said, “Dabney, did you go to the salon?”

“Yes!” she said. There was exasperation in her voice that was exasperation about having to lie. “Call the salon yourself if you don’t believe me!”

For a second, she thought he might do exactly that. She tried to imagine how compromised Box’s dignity would be if he stooped to calling the salon to confirm that Dabney had actually been in for an appointment. And then when Lindsey, the receptionist, said that no, they hadn’t seen Dabney that afternoon, Dabney’s appointment was for Saturday afternoon (so that her hair would look nice and smell pretty for the Levinsons’ annual Backyard BBQ on Abrams Point), what would Box say?

Thankfully, she didn’t have to worry, because Box let the issue go, and Dabney was able to breathe. That night, they went to the Proprietors with Agnes-who seemed preoccupied and strangely quiet-and a certain normalcy was restored.

But as she and Box brushed their teeth and climbed into bed that night, she thought, I don’t want normalcy.

She wanted Clendenin.

He received the news of Miranda Gilbert’s resignation not over the phone, as he would have expected, but by a letter mailed to the Nantucket house. The letter was written on heavy, creamy stock; initially, Box thought it might be a thank-you note for the ill-conceived and aborted weekend on Nantucket. But when he read it, he realized it was something else entirely.

Dearest Box,

I am writing to thank you for four of the finest and most stimulating years an economist could ask for. What a joy and a blessing it has been working with you.

A collusion of circumstance has made it necessary for me to leave Harvard. I have broken my engagement to Christian, for reasons that I dare not explain in this letter, and at nearly the same time, I was approached by Dr. Wilma Dresdalay at Columbia University about a research opportunity. For both personal and professional reasons, it feels like a move from Harvard and Cambridge to Columbia and Manhattan is the right one. New York is the epicenter of economic thought, as you know, and I can hardly pass up this chance.

I will miss you terribly-your intelligence, your patience, your kindness, and your wit. I’ll send along a new e-mail and physical address as soon as I can so that we might stay in touch.

Fondly and with inexpressible gratitude,

Miranda

Box set the letter down on his blotter, then let out a long, frustrated stream of air.

“Goddammit!” he bellowed.

He was losing Miranda. She had been with him a long time, longer than any other postdoc research assistant; their compatibility had been remarkable. He would never find anyone like her, not anyone close.

“Goddammit!”

Dabney was somewhere in the house. No doubt she heard him yelling, but she wouldn’t knock. She found the closed door to his study intimidating.

He read the letter again. Certain things about it nagged at him, starting with the first word, Dearest. “Dearest Box.”

Was he, in fact, her dearest? Was all this related to the nonsense Dabney had conjured up? Was Miranda Gilbert in love with Box, as Dabney had claimed?

There was the use of the word stimulating.

There was news of the broken engagement, the details of which she dared not mention. A broken engagement today, when a week or so earlier, everything had been hunky-dory? Box had asked after the good doctor, and Miranda had told Box that Christian was utterly absorbed with work, but that this was as per usual. For reasons that I dare not mention in this letter. What did that mean? To Box, it felt like Miranda must have gone directly home from Nantucket and ended the relationship.

What had Dabney said to her?

Then the zinger that Miranda was moving to New York, to Columbia, to work with Wilma Dresdalay. Wilma’s name had been mentioned casually, as though Miranda were unaware that Wilma was the only living economist whose work Box consistently admired and even envied. There was only one person Miranda would be wise to leave Box for, and that was Wilma. He couldn’t fault her one bit.

Then the line I will miss you terribly. This was the line that Box fixated on. She would miss him terribly. It sounded heartfelt, nearly romantic. Well, yes, Box would miss her terribly as well. She was singular and extraordinary. He tried not to think of how her smile lit up the offices, or how he enjoyed her accent the way one enjoyed music, or how on the occasions when they went to the movies together, she grabbed his arm in excitement or fear. When they went to dinner with colleagues, she presented beautifully, with her strawberry hair in a loose bun, and her clothes soft and feminine; she wore a lot of ivory and peach, which flattered her complexion. Her knowledge of wine was comprehensive; she liked trying new varietals and vineyards and she always chose wines that she knew would excite and please Box.

He admitted to himself that he would miss Miranda Gilbert terribly as well, and not only as a colleague. The thought of her leaving caused his heart to sputter like a dying engine. She had been, perhaps more than anything else, his friend.

Fondly and with inexpressible gratitude-those words were appropriate, and mutual.

“Goddammit!”

The third time brought Dabney to the door.

“Box?” she said, knocking lightly. “Are you all right?”

He opened the door and thrust the letter into Dabney’s hands, but he didn’t wait for her to read it.

“Miranda has resigned, she’s going to Columbia to work with Wilma.” He cleared his throat. “Seems she’s broken off the engagement with Christian.”

“Oh,” Dabney said. “Wow!”

Five days of silence from CJ. It was now a standoff. He was waiting for her to break down and change her mind. The silence was also eerie; she hadn’t believed him capable of it.

She started joining Riley for trips to the beach after work. She swam while he surfed, then they lay around on his cherry-red beach blanket like a couple of seals and enjoyed the golden hour-the hour when the sun was sublime and mellow. Despite the turmoil of the summer, Agnes relaxed with Riley.

One night, she let Clendenin cook her dinner. Fried rice with authentic spices that he had ordered on the Internet-the fragrant rice was a deep yellow and was studded with delicious tidbits-golden raisins, lacquered pork, rock shrimp-that looked like tiny gems. That night, Clen talked about what Dabney had been like in high school-how popular and confident she had been, her elaborate matchmaking schemes, even among the faculty, her love of Nantucket. Dabney had been salutatorian of their class, and Clen the valedictorian; Dabney had been bitter about that, Clen said. He had her by three-tenths of a percentage point in GPA and forty points verbal and ten points math in the SAT-but she had gotten into Harvard and he hadn’t. Back then, it had been easier to get into Harvard as a girl, or so Clen had told himself at the time. Dabney used to keep a notebook, he said, of her favorite streets on the island. Charter Street, in the fish lots, was her very favorite. She wanted to live on Charter Street when she grew up, and if not Charter, then Quince, or Lily.

After dinner, Clen poured them each a bourbon and he smoked a cigarette on the front porch while Agnes did the dishes. Then she joined him on the porch and they looked at the stars in the sky, and at the large, empty, illuminated house that it was Clen’s job to caretake.

Agnes said, “Will you stay here on Nantucket?”

“I don’t see ever leaving again,” Clendenin said. “Unless something happens to your mother. For me, this island is home, but it’s home because of Dabney. I moved here when I was fourteen. I lived here only three weeks before she befriended me, and as soon as she did, I never wanted to leave. She gives this island its meaning. Dabney, Nantucket. Nantucket, Dabney.” He exhaled. “And long as she stays, I stay.”

Agnes wanted to ask him what he thought was going to happen. Did he think Dabney would leave Box? And…marry him? At that moment, Agnes understood that she had gotten way too involved in the love triangle. Her mother, her father, her other father.

She gathered up the keys to the Prius. “I’d better go,” she said.

She was at the farm, selecting ears of corn for dinner. She felt so weak and so sick, she could barely stand. She should have called the doctor weeks ago-but as soon as she resolved to do it, she felt better, or life got in the way. That morning, Dr. Marcus Cobb, Nina Mobley’s beau, had gone fishing and caught five striped bass. When he came into the office to take Nina out to lunch, he gave Dabney a heavy bag of fresh filets.

Dabney had been thrilled with the fish; she instantly planned dinner: grilled striped bass, corn on the cob, farm greens lightly dressed. It had sounded like the perfect meal at noon, but now, at five, Dabney was in so much pain that she wanted to take a pill and sleep until morning.

Forbearance. She would choose the corn. The fish was already marinating on her kitchen counter. With a few simple instructions, Agnes could pull dinner together.

Suddenly, there was a woman at the corn crib, trying to get Dabney’s attention. It was Elizabeth Jennings.

“Elizabeth!” Dabney said. “Hello!” She was in too much pain to talk to Elizabeth. The pain was like a black marble, and Dabney was suspended inside.