Elin Hilderbrand - The Rumor

“It’s fiction!” Madeline said. “I write fiction. The problem is that nobody wants fiction anymore! They want memoir! They want ‘based on a true story.’ Everyone should be reading Mary Karr and Erik Larson! But that”-Madeline pointed at the legal pad-“is made up! It is the purest of fiction! I made up a story to entertain my readers!”

“The Easy Coast wasn’t pure fiction,” Trevor said. “It was based on your real life. It was about Geoffrey. And Hotel Springford was about your relationship with your mother. So that means the only pure piece of fiction you’ve written was Islandia-and that was more like science fiction. I encouraged you to write a sequel. But no-apparently, you were compelled to write this garbage.”

“It isn’t garbage,” Madeline said.

“You’re right,” Trevor said. “As angry and as embarrassed as I am, I respect you too much to call your work garbage.”

“Maybe it is garbage,” Madeline said. “I can’t tell. It’s nowhere close to finished.” She stared at her husband’s handsome profile. Meeting Trevor had been life’s way of making amends for all the ways Madeline had been gypped earlier in life-the feeble parenting of her mother, the dangerous relationship with Geoffrey. With Trevor’s love, she had essentially become Gretchen Green, girl hero. She had become the woman she wanted to be. Or nearly. She reached out to hug him.

Trevor didn’t exactly push Madeline away, but he didn’t embrace her either. He stiffened, and then he stood up.

“I need you to help me!” Madeline said. “I need you to support me. You’re my husband.”

“And you’re my wife,” Trevor said. His tone was marginally kinder, and Madeline felt a wash of relief. But then he said, “I think maybe you need space. Or I do.”

“Space?” Madeline said. “What do you mean by space?”

“I think you should stay here for a few days,” Trevor said. “While I try and process this.”

“I don’t want to stay here!” Madeline said. “What a horrible suggestion.”

“If you let me read what you’ve written, I’ll change my mind,” Trevor said. “But I know you pretty damn well, Madeline King, and my gut tells me you’re hiding something.”

“I’m not hiding anything!” Madeline said. But her tone of voice wasn’t convincing even to herself, and it would never fool Trevor. “I’m just a writer trying to protect my work.”

“Madeline,” he said.

She nearly blurted it out: Grace is having an affair with Benton Coe, and I’m secretly using it as fodder for my new book. But it wasn’t my fault! I got backed into a corner. Or I painted myself into one.

“I don’t want you to read it,” she said. “Later you can, but not right now.”

“Fair enough,” he said. He stood up and moved for the door.

“You’re serious,” she said. “You’re leaving?”

“Yes.”

“How long is ‘a few days’?” she asked. She worried that Trevor was saying a few days but actually meant forever.

“I don’t know, Madeline,” Trevor said. “A few days. If you need a firm number, I’d say a week.”

“A week?”

“I need to simmer down,” Trevor said.

That night, Madeline slept on the uncomfortable double bed in the apartment. She tried to think of it as fun, an adventure, but the mattress was stiff and unforgiving, and the sheets that she’d found in the bathroom closet smelled funny. There was one window in the bedroom that faced an alley which people coming out of the Boarding House and Ventuno cut through to get home. Madeline could hear their footsteps and their voices, buoyant and slurred with alcohol. She should have had a glass of wine before bed herself, but she didn’t want anyone to see her buying wine at Murray’s and then heading back to her apartment with it.

She didn’t have the desire or the money to take herself out to dinner-and how would that look, anyway? Madeline King, out to dinner alone, possibly waiting for her lover to show up.

She made herself a peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich for dinner.

She thought she might sleep better on the sofa, so she moved to the living room with her blanket and her pillow, but the front windows had no shades, no treatments at all, and light pollution from Centre Street poured in. Madeline sat up and stared at the box of bird eggs and wondered about the previous owner of this apartment, now living on a cliff somewhere in St. John.

How could she fix this? Should she have Eddie call Trevor and assuage his worries? That sounded like a good idea-maybe? Or it could backfire and make things way worse.

What if Trevor divorced her? The mere thought was preposterous. Or it had been until today. She and Trevor had spent the majority of their marriage on a path paved with rainbows. They were the Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore of Nantucket!

But maybe that was why this idiotic rumor had spread-because people were jealous and they wanted the “happy couple” to be revealed as anything but.

When Madeline finally did fall asleep, she had a nightmare about Geoffrey. In real life, Geoffrey had had a shaved head and an elaborate tattoo of Prometheus on his back. But in Madeline’s dream, Geoffrey was Rachel McMann’s husband, Dr. Andy, only Dr. Andy had a mouthful of black teeth. When he secured the plastic zip ties to Madeline’s wrists and ankles, he showed her his teeth, and she screamed, and the scream woke her up.

Madeline lay facedown on the sofa, her face buried in the cushion, and she thought, What have I done?

My gut tells me you’re hiding something. Trevor would never have thought that if he hadn’t heard the blasted rumor from Pamela.

Madeline stood up and paced the apartment, stopping at the dark window to shout at the street.

Mind!

Your!

Own!

Business!

Stop!

Gossiping!

She pictured women lunching at the Galley, talking about Madeline; she envisioned Janice, the hygienist at Dr. Andy’s office, spreading the rumor to all of her patients. Did you hear? She pictured Pamela at Island Air telling Barry, the bartender at the airport restaurant, who in turn would tell his wife, Candace, who was the receptionist at the RJ Miller Salon. Once it got into places like the dentists’ offices and the salons, there would be no stopping it. Blond Sharon would tell her friends at the yacht club as they sailed and played tennis and ate Cobb salad. Then, of course, the brokers would get hold of it. It would be whispered about during an open house for an eleven-million-dollar listing in Monomoy. From there, it would travel out to Sconset-to the post office and the Summer House pool. People at the Wauwinet gatehouse would gossip about it as they let the air out of their tires before heading up to Great Point. Madeline knew she wasn’t really the target; Eddie was the target. A lot of people hated Eddie. The librarians at the Atheneum would be talking about it, and the men who loaded cars onto the steamship, and the scuppers who had their boats serviced at Madaket Marine, and the cast of Pygmalion, put on by Theatre Workshop of Nantucket.

Did you hear? Madeline King and Eddie Pancik.

And she’s writing a novel about it!

Madeline was so disgusted, so humiliated and embarrassed and horrified, and so ashamed-because she knew she had opened herself up to this-that she picked up the box of delicate bird eggs and brought it down over her bent knee so that the glass shattered and the eggs cracked and debris scattered all over the floor.

There, she thought. She had ruined the only authentic and interesting thing in this apartment.

In the morning, Madeline awoke to a text from Rachel McMann. It said: Hey, there. Brick told Calgary that you’ve moved out for a while? Imagine you could use a friend? How about drinks on Wednesday night?

Madeline stared at the screen. Brick told Calgary! And now Rachel McMann knew that Madeline was staying at the apartment for a few days-which was, Madeline would have liked to point out, a whole lot different from “moving out”-and Rachel was also the one who had told the world about Madeline’s new novel. She was the only one-other than Redd and Angie and the staff at Final Word, all of whom lived in Manhattan, which was basically another galaxy-who had read it!

Madeline wanted to text back: Fuck you, Rachel.

But instead, she deleted the text and got to work.

The second they walked through Jean Burton’s trellised arbor, Grace felt the eyes of fifty jealous women upon her.

She was on Benton’s arm.

Jean, ever the gracious hostess, approached as soon as Grace and Benton entered the yard.

“Grace!” Jean said. “I am so happy to see you. And, Benton…” She moved in to give him a juicy smooch on the cheek. It would go this way all evening, Grace knew. The upstanding ladies of the Nantucket Garden Club would all fall over themselves for Benton’s attention. Some of the women might even out-and-out proposition him.

But he belonged to Grace.

In years past, Grace had donned what Eddie called a “Mary, Mary, quite contrary” outfit for this event-a white blouse and long skirt, as well as her Peter Beaton straw hat. But tonight, she was wearing a brand-new black halter dress, a pearl choker, and a pair of black thong sandals that she had taken from Allegra’s closet. She had decided to wear her hair down and loose, because that was how Benton liked it best.

Even Eddie did a double take when he saw her. “Wow,” he said. “You look great. Where are you going again?”

“The Sunset Soiree,” Grace said, trying not to show her frustration. The man didn’t remember a thing she told him. “Nantucket Garden Club.”

“Oh, right,” Eddie said.

Grace nearly reminded him that she was attending with Benton and that Eddie had given his okay. But then she thought, Why stir the pot? She kissed Eddie and Hope good-bye. Allegra was out.

Grace had picked Benton up at his complex off Old South Road, out by the airport. Benton rented two large barnlike buildings that housed his fleet of work trucks and all of the trailers, mowers, and backhoes. He lived in an apartment on the top floor of one of the two buildings with his manager, Donovan, and Donovan’s girlfriend, Leslie, who ran one of Benton’s landscaping crews. When Benton socialized, he did so with Leslie and Donovan. They went to beach barbecues and art openings and listened to live music at the Lobster Trap. This was the extent of what Grace knew about Benton’s life apart from her on Nantucket.

But now, she was seeing his space. It was dusty and industrial. There wasn’t a blade of grass in sight. The driveway was gravel; the “yard” asphalt.

The cobbler’s son has no shoes, Grace thought. Still, she liked seeing all of the small pickups lined up with the four-leaf clovers painted on the sides. This was Benton Coe’s headquarters, his mission control, his domain.

She honked the horn, a practice her grandmother Sabine would have frowned upon. An extramarital affair was one thing-certainly they had been prevalent in the 1940s and ’50s, when Sabine was Grace’s age-but honking the car horn instead of walking to the front door was nigh unforgivable. But Grace didn’t want this to seem like a “date.” She didn’t want to meet Donovan or Leslie, and she didn’t want any of Benton’s workers-some of whom lived in an apartment on the top floor of the other building-to see a woman in a black dress knocking on their boss’s door.

But when Benton had come strolling out of the house in stone-white pants, a turquoise-blue button-down shirt, a navy blazer, and loafers, Grace swooned. She had to put her Range Rover in park and take a few metered breaths. The man was… so gorgeous. She had never seen him in anything other than jeans, a T-shirt, and his hooded sweatshirt.

He had climbed into the car and said, “Damn, Grace. You are so beautiful it blows my mind.”

Smile and say thank you, she thought. But his words had left her tongue-tied. The tops of her ears buzzed.

Grace, never one to show up at a party empty handed, gave Jean a carton of pale blue eggs. “These are from Hillary and the other Araucanas,” she said. “My best producers.”

“I’m partial to Ladybird’s speckled eggs,” Benton said.

Jean accepted the carton and said, “I’ll treat them like gold.” Then she dramatically swept a hand, presenting her yard-manicured in its every aspect-and the mandolin player and the caterers passing hors d’oeuvres and also, Grace supposed, the sun, which was dutifully casting a golden, syrupy glow over the party. Immediately, Grace noticed la grande table, half of which served as a bar and half of which was a groaning board of cheeses, grapes, strawberries, apricots, nuts, salami, marinated vegetables, crackers, baguette slices, quince paste, olives, and dips. Grace had invented la grande table three years earlier-it was just a ploughman’s lunch on a bigger scale-and Jean had continued the tradition.