“Let’s try the lobster mac-and-cheese bites. I hear the meat is fresh off the boat,” said Judith. Eliza searched her mother-in-law’s face for signs of irony, but Judith’s expression was sphinxlike.
“Okay,” Eliza said, even though sometimes the thought of eating lobster seemed cannibalistic, like she was eating one of her own children.
As they waited for another waiter to come by with food they considered each other.
“Eliza, are you crying?”
“I know,” Eliza said. “I shouldn’t, I’ll ruin my makeup. I never wear this much eyeliner, I never should have—”
“Don’t worry about the makeup,” said Judith. “That’s my advice to you and to girls and women everywhere: never worry about the makeup.” She said that with a face full of Estée Lauder, but at least she said it. Judith handed Eliza a cocktail napkin with a Malawi flag printed on it.
Eliza closed her eyes and tried to see down the long tunnel that was the future, that was life going on and on and on, with its smooth patches and its bumpy patches and its messiness and chaos and beauty; she could even, she thought, see a time when she might feel okay about her father, when she might start to feel quite normal. Not yet, maybe not for a long time. But someday.
She opened her eyes and took another sip of African Sunrise. Almost empty. There was a waiter heading their way, palming a tray of fresh drinks.
“Lovely,” breathed Judith. She removed two glasses and set them down on the table. “Since the very first time Rob brought you home I’ve been intimidated by you, Eliza.”
Eliza choked on her next sip. She said, “Excuse me? You were intimidated by me?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
“Because, well, you’re intimidating.”
“Me?”
“You’re so smart, and, pardon the expression, but you really pulled yourself up by your bootstraps, and you work hard, and you know your way around a lobster boat and a scalpel, and you’re an amazing mother…”
“Wow,” said Eliza. The liquor made her bold and she said, “I thought I was the consolation prize. I thought you always wanted Rob to marry Kitty Sutherland. All these years, I thought you thought Rob married down.”
“Kitty Sutherland is a moron with a twentieth of your personality. Kitty Sutherland would have been the consolation prize. Rob married up, my dear girl. Rob married up.”
Judith tipped her glass toward Eliza, and Eliza tipped hers toward Judith, and they clinked lightly, though the sound was swallowed by the background noise, by the party for the East African children.
Maybe it was the cocktail making its way through her veins, or maybe it was the fact that Judith’s white dress gave her a faintly religious air, but Eliza was beginning to feel something wash over her that might have been absolution.
The next morning, first thing when she woke up, she was going to find those papers from Phineas Tarbox’s office, and she was going to sign the heck out of them.
“There but for,” said Judith, taking a sip of the African Sunrise. Despite the white dress, the coiffed hair, the glittering rings and necklace, Eliza could see in her a teenager, long-legged and lighthearted, buoyant and free, her whole life ahead of her, running along a twilit beach on the Jersey Shore.
Eliza had never heard the quote shortened that way—that was nervy of Judith, like a lot of things about Judith were nervy: her hair and her clothing and her eyebrows and her attitude. But Eliza liked Judith’s version. It fit. It made for a good ending.
Epilogue
Two weeks after Deirdre’s gala, which netted sixty-two thousand dollars for East Africa Needs You, at approximately eight thirty one evening, Robert Barnes II got a call from one Nadine Edwards, who had just returned to Boston after spending the summer on the Vineyard.
She had received Rob’s preliminary sketches for the home she was thinking of building in Naples, Maine. She was smitten. She simply adored lake culture; she thought it was quaint and genuine after so many summers of her life spent on the ocean. She thought pontoons were a fabulous and welcome change from yachts; she thought her grandchildren would leap at the chance to own a water trampoline they could access from the dock; her son was simply dying to do some serious hiking off the Kancamagus Highway. She was over the moon about the sketches. She couldn’t wait to get started. Could he get her in by, say…
“No promises,” said Rob. “I’m sorry.”
“No promises,” agreed Nadine Edwards, sounding only a little bit disappointed. “But maybe if you could just say that, at the latest—”
“I would love to work with you, Mrs. Edwards,” said Rob, politely but firmly. “I’m so happy you liked the sketches. But I won’t be able to say until the work is well under way when it might be complete.”
Nadine was sorry Rob had had such a difficult time with Christine Cabot—Rob, Nadine was happy to share, was not the first person who had had a difficult time with Christine Cabot. Christine Cabot had fired her dog groomer, her hairdresser, her dry cleaner. Her landscaper, twice. Her driver. “She’d fire her kids if she could,” confided Nadine. “I think she did fire one of them.” (“I bet it was Jonathan Junior, the cokehead,” said Eliza to Rob, later.) “I mean,” continued Nadine, “I love her to pieces, but she is absolutely impossible to deal with. And I would love to hire you to build my house, Rob.”
Rob considered this proposition. He felt a few things. He felt an instant solidarity with Nadine Edwards. He felt an urge to look immediately for GCs who had no relation to Mark Ruggman. He felt a touch of heartburn, from the scrumptious seafood risotto Eliza had made for dinner that night. And he felt something else, something blooming inside of him, something that at first was difficult to identify. But after a moment it became obvious: it was the certainty of his own good fortune.
———
Andi and Daphne were determined to keep The Cup open through the whole of the winter even though there were days when they had not a single customer. Three days after the start of the new year, Mary was sitting at table twelve at The Cup with Andi, who was teaching her to do the bookkeeping, when she felt a dull ache that radiated around her belly. It went away, and then it came back again, more insistently, a seizing, aching pain deep inside. “Um,” she said. “Andi?” She gasped.
“Oh, shit,” said Andi. “Holy shit, Mary, is it happening?”
Mary nodded and whispered, “I think so. I mean, I don’t know. But I think so?”
Twelve hours later, in the obstetrics wing of Maine Coast Memorial in Ellsworth, in a room with pale green walls, Mary gave birth to Patrick Charles Brown. (“I would have named him Charlie,” said Mary. “But come on, I can’t do that to him. Charlie Brown.”) Patrick weighed six pounds and two ounces and his blood type was O positive and his eyes were indigo and he had a set of lungs on him like you wouldn’t believe—the nurses said they thought his screams could be heard in Bangor and beyond.