Off Season (24 page)

But even when the door was closed, she did not want to turn around and see the look in his eyes as he lay on the bed that they’d just shared, where they’d made love with tenderness and with the bond of trust shared between husband and wife, the trust she had violated by having Addie contact Bartlett.

She did not want to turn around, but when Ben did not speak, she knew she must.

He was not in the bed, though. He was gone.

Slowly she moved back into the bedroom. He was standing at the window, looking out at Fifth Avenue as it yawned and stretched and began another day, as if the two people up in the Plaza suite were not about to have their marriage severed because the wife had been an insensitive, controlling ass, like those people she detested in the career of her choice.

“It was my problem,” Ben said, his muscled back to her, wearing an old T-shirt from the Menemsha Blues
store that had been silk-screened with a fish. “I thought we agreed it was my problem.”

A chill from the air closed in on her. She wanted to lie, to say Herb Bartlett was coming for a different reason, for the contract, perhaps. But the man’s name was as famous as F. Lee Bailey or Johnnie Cochran, and Ben would see through her. She shut her eyes. “I didn’t tell Addie,” she whispered. “I lied. I said that a boy on the Vineyard …” She didn’t finish her sentence because she didn’t know how.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It doesn’t matter because I don’t need him anymore. Not Herb Bartlett or any other attorney. I don’t need him because this is over.”

Jill wished she felt as confident of that as he did.

“I’m willing to forget you did this, honey,” he said, “because I know that you love me, and I know you only did it because you do.”

She stood in place and started to shake. Then the tears fell from her eyes and ran down the front of her silk negligee. “I’m so sorry,” she said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Ben said. Then he turned around, went to her, and gave her a forgiving hug. “It doesn’t matter because it’s over,” he repeated.

“My grandfather’s dead, so there’s no one to pay you,” Mindy said to Dr. Reynolds, who had come by the Mallotti house in the morning, as if no one had told her that her services would no longer be required.

“I know he died,” the doctor said. “And I’m not here for the money. I came to see how you’re doing.”

Mindy scuffed her feet on the hard-packed dirt underneath the swing. She puffed out air and saw her breath, wishing the doctor would go away. “How’d you find me?”

The doctor leaned against the iron frame that was cemented into the ground and held the swing set, which must be really old because the Mallottis’ kids had moved off-island years ago. “I went to your house yesterday afternoon. A policeman was there. He told me you were staying here with Mr. and Mrs. Mallotti.”

Mindy pushed her swing back and pumped her legs. “Did they put yellow tape around the crime scene?” Had they tied one end to the garage and one end to the truck and made a circle around the oak trees with Grandpa dead inside? The question had plagued her ever since the cops made her leave.

“Your grandfather had a heart attack,” the doctor replied. “There was no crime.”

Mindy pumped her legs again. She hoped the cops had left a guard there, so the evidence wouldn’t be disturbed, in case the autopsy showed he hadn’t died of natural causes but from foul play. She had, after all, seen her share of
NYPD Blue
, though Grandpa had often remarked that a young girl shouldn’t watch it.

“It must have been terrible to find him.”

She wished the doctor hadn’t mentioned that. It was bad enough that Mindy had to talk to her about
the afternoon in question
, the afternoon with Ben. Well, that was one thing, and this was another.

Without answering, she pushed off again and swung high in the air. Through the leafless trees, she could see Dutcher’s Dock, where Grandpa had kept his boat. Maybe the boat would sit and rot there in the water, or maybe one of Grandpa’s friends would take it. It would be sad to see it go somewhere else. It would be sad to see the back painted over where Grandpa had lettered “Melinda Anne,” her name.

“I’ll be there tomorrow,” the doctor said, “at the funeral.”

In midflight, Mindy shrugged.

“I wanted you to know. In case you need to talk to someone. In case you need a friend.”

Mindy blinked against the breeze that had come up from the harbor. In summer there was no breeze, because the trees stopped it from coming. But in winter, when you didn’t need it, there it was. Cold and raw and chilling.

The swing floated to a stop. Dr. Reynolds had her hand on the chain.

“Mindy,” she said, “what about your mother? Has she been notified?”

Mindy wanted to take the doctor’s hand off the chain. She wanted to swing again, to feel the cool November air on her face. She did not want to talk to this woman, now or ever again.

She sighed the way Grandpa had sighed when he was what he called “exasperated” with her. She gave a noncommittal shrug.

The doctor released her grip, and Mindy pushed off again.

“Have you talked with anyone from the police?” the doctor asked above the breeze. “Do you know what’s going to happen next?”

Mindy knew the doctor was talking about
her
, about where she was going to go, on account of she was only ten. She pumped up high, then back again, then up. The doctor stood with her hands in her tweed coat pockets, sort of waiting for Mindy to speak again, like it was her turn, because the doctor had spoken last.

But Mindy was done talking. There was nothing left to say.

“We won’t be needing your services after all,” Ben said to Herb Bartlett when the attorney met them at lunchtime, downstairs in Palm Court. Thankfully the shots at F.A.O. Schwarz had not taken long, and they’d crossed
the street to the Plaza in plenty of time. Christopher had whisked Addie into the Oak Room Bar to avoid interference.

“The guy who pressed charges is dead,” Ben continued, “so the case will be dropped.”

Bartlett had on a denim shirt and fringed leather jacket. Across the table, Jill studied the man, wondering if denim was legal attire for Atlanta. Then again, when one was as successful as Herb Bartlett, what one wore did not matter.

“What about the Commonwealth?” Bartlett asked. He had ordered a seafood salad and picked out the crab and the shrimp, dodging the vegetables like a man on a high-protein diet.

Ben laughed. “I don’t think you understand, Mr. Bartlett. Thanks for your interest, but the man is dead.”

“I thought the crime was committed against a young girl.”

Ben lifted his fork to his fillet, then set it down before he took a bite. “It was,” he replied. “But the man who pressed charges was the girl’s grandfather. Now he’s dead.”

Glancing around the bright white, gold, and green room, Jill wondered how many others in the lunch crowd were beset with a problem as severe as this. Then her eyes caught herself in a huge mirror, where she saw anguish on her face, as if deep down she knew this was not going to be as easy as Ben had hoped. “Mr. Bartlett,” she said, “we appreciate that you’ve flown here—”

Bartlett raised his hand. “Just so you know, the case may not be over. Addie has filled me in on the details. You should know that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has the right to go forward, dead grandfather or not.”

Ben pushed his chair back from the table. Jill took a bite of her Cobb salad, pretending to be nonchalant, the unaffected bystander at an accident scene.

“In Massachusetts the charge would be indecent assault and battery on a child under the age of fourteen,” Bartlett continued in a soft southern drawl. “Those Yankee fathers take that very seriously. So seriously that if the accused is found guilty, it can mean seven years to life. And if there’s no evidence, it’s his word against the girl’s. Of course,” he continued, “deals can always be made. Plea bargains. A guilty plea avoids a trial. My guess is that it would result in supervised probation or house arrest. Your young man would be lucky, though. Although there’s a register, Massachusetts doesn’t publish the names of sex offenders on the Internet. At least not yet.” He held out his hand and passed a card to Ben. “In case you need me after all, don’t hesitate to call.”

He took his napkin from his lap, set it on the table, and stood up. Then he mentioned something about a limo to the airport, and he was gone.

Ben looked at the card, then at his wife. “We won’t need him, honey,” he said, but his voice did not sound convincing, and Jill would have bet they were thinking the same thing.

Seven years to life
.

His word against the girl’s
.

Jill plucked the card from Ben’s hand and tucked it safely into her purse.

She wore high white boots and a short white dress with fur around the hem. Her bleached blond hair was pinned up on her head, and her fingernails were painted blue and had silver glitter on the tips.

Mindy thought her mother looked like she belonged in a TV commercial for cool-refreshment-minty gum, not at a funeral, not at Grandpa’s funeral.

But the truth was, Fern Alice Ashenbach had, as she said this morning, “not expected to be in attendance at a funeral,” so she’d had no black dresses with her, down there in the islands where Mrs. Mallotti had tracked her from the itinerary in Grandpa’s kitchen drawer.

Still, Mindy couldn’t help but wonder why her mother didn’t have something more appropriate to wear on the Vineyard, funeral or no funeral, fur-trimmed dresses being a long way from Black Dog sweatshirts. Maybe her mother and her dress belonged back in San Antonio, where she’d been born and raised. Maybe there she did not look out of place.

They walked down the short aisle of the little church in Chilmark. Mindy tried not to notice that people were
staring at her mother and whispering to one another behind their hands.

The church was full: not because Grandpa had so many friends, but because he was a native islander and so was one of them. Zac Lambert and Terry Clarkson and, of course, the Mallottis and Verge Benson and Frankie Paul—they all were there, as if showing up proved that they had cheated death, that it wasn’t them up front in that shiny wooden box.

The minister talked forever about a man he’d never met. Mindy mostly looked at her shoes, except when her mother took her hand and squeezed it. Then Mindy looked up to see her mother dab the corners of her eyes. Mindy could not imagine why her mother was crying. Her mother, the unemotional one. Her mother, Fern Alice Ashenbach—
F.A.A.
, she used to love to say, adding she should have been an airline pilot instead of a yacht captain. It was a stupid joke, but it always made the men who heard it laugh.

Sitting on the hard pew, Mindy remembered the very different funeral of her father, Grandpa’s son, F.A.A.’s not-so-devoted husband of eight years. Mindy had been six when he died, not so old, but not so young that she didn’t remember the funeral or him.

That funeral had been small, just Grandpa and her mother and the minister and her. It wasn’t in the church; it was in the cemetery, right over the hole that her father’s coffin was later dropped into.

Grandpa had cried a lot.

“It’s all your fault,” Mindy had heard him tell her mother. “Your booze. Your boyfriends.”

Her mother hadn’t answered.

After that they’d gone back to the house. Mindy sat on the stool in the kitchen, looking at the big calendar where her father always crossed off each day as if he couldn’t wait until the next one, as if today wasn’t good
enough and he wanted to eliminate it from the record of his life.

It had been while Mindy was sitting there after the funeral that her mother had emerged with a suitcase packed for one.

“I’ll send you presents from every port,” her mother said as she bent to kiss Mindy’s cheek. “Grandpa will take good care of you. Behave for him, okay?”

Even then, even at six, Mindy knew her mother was giving up her duty and running off to a new life.

Now she was back, and they were at another funeral. Mindy felt an ache inside her belly and wondered what would happen to her this time when her mother left again.

Christopher agreed with Jill that it might not be over. Ben, however, was convinced that it was and had blissfully gone off to Christmas shop on Fifth Avenue while they did a final day of shooting in Central Park.

Jill cupped her hand around a thick mug of hot chocolate as the photographers and Addie set up another shot, this one on a small arched bridge over a pond, the shadow of the city framing the background, the sky dark and still and threatening snow.

“What are you going to do?” Christopher asked. It was a question she’d asked herself a hundred or so times since Bartlett had left, a thousand or so times since this had begun.

“I’m going home when we’re finished tomorrow. I’m going to put together a reel to send Maurice to see if he might have some ideas for Vineyard Productions, based on the fact that once I’ve done
Good Night, USA
, the blackball will have been lifted. I’m going to concentrate on my work and on rebuilding my career in as small a way as necessary to maintain my Vineyard life.”