The Necklace Page 4

  Ambrose always wanted something more, something extreme, the impossible. People had been telling him this since he was a boy.

  She avoided his eye, slipped her hand in his back trouser pocket, and pinched his flask—a practiced move, meant to shock. She stole a quick nip of his gin with a little wink, never losing her footing. This had the stale feel of show to Ambrose, something she’d done before with other dance partners to establish herself as modern. These hackneyed moves sometimes disappointed him—small sneaking rebellions that never amounted to much. It gave him the tiniest glimpse of one possible future for her, as a debutante who’d been on the scene too long. And it made him more panicked that she come with him, that she avoid that particular fate by choosing daring and desire now.

  “We’ll arrange to meet distant relations all along the way,” he continued, her swig of gin bringing him back, spurring him to push her, to make her see that it was possible. “And of course, Dicky will be with us.”

  She put the flask back in his pocket with a scandalous pat. They’d stopped moving and now she started pushing against his arms, trying to get him dancing again.

  “Dicky would be a wonderful chaperone,” she teased once they were moving. “My parents would be so reassured.”

  He wished then that May would stop hiding behind what others thought—whether it was her parents or her friends. If she didn’t want to go because of what people would think, at least she could acknowledge that this was her conclusion and not hide behind her parents. He knew May thought for herself; when would she speak for herself, too? “Dicky’s so . . .” Ambrose trailed off, thinking of his friend’s joie de vivre. Though maybe not the deepest thinker, Dicky did as he pleased.

  “Feckless,” May said.

  “Unbound,” Ambrose corrected. “And kind. Look at him with a real Mrs. Grundy like Gretchen.” Gretchen Van Horn laughed nearby while Dicky pushed her around in a fashionable fox-trot. Of course he’d managed to charm himself back into her frumpy good graces.

  “Perhaps,” May said. “But it’s easy for him to be unbound by convention. Young, all the money in the world, and . . .”

  “And what?”

  “And a boy, a man, I guess. Entitled to his pleasures.”

  “Entitled?” Ambrose balked at the judgment in the word.

  “He gets to do what he wants, anyway,” May said, turning her attention to the band.

  Ambrose felt a tap as someone tried to cut in. “I believe I reserved this dance.”

  Ambrose swung May around so that his back was to his rival, blocking her from him, as he said, “Buzz off. Should have got her shoe.”

  May reached out and patted the intruder’s arm. “Next one,” she said.

  Ambrose increased his grip on her, thinking of what it would be like for her in his absence—men circling.

  “He probably wants advice on some girl,” she said, as if hearing his thoughts.

  “Come with me,” he said again.

  She stopped and drew back. “You’re leaving,” she said, quietly. “You chose that.”

  “Choose to come with me.” Trust me, he was thinking. Trust that we belong together.

  Perhaps his sister was right. Perhaps he was a romantic.

  He saw Ethan step out of the French doors and scan the party, no doubt looking for them. Ambrose took care that May’s back remained to Ethan. Really, he didn’t know why he had to do that. He felt overwrought, and just before he swung her off the dance floor and into the grass, he saw Loulou take Ethan’s arm and lead him back inside. Did Ambrose imagine the tiny wave from his sister?

  Ambrose clasped May’s hand and led her out of the garden and down a narrow path mown through an idle pasture that was filling in with saplings—locust and poplar and sassafras—a leftover from when this had been a working field.

  “What are you doing?” May asked.

  He tugged her along with a smile, heading for the pond on the other side of a meadow. Ethan had convinced their father to send his ballistics team, used for blasting out quarries, to come out to the farm and blast a pond into the back of his land. After the extensive dynamiting and dredging, the pond covered twenty-five acres and was a consistent sixteen feet deep, more lake than muddy swimming hole. To get in, one had to jump from a diving board jutting out from a stone walkway set between two bathhouses used for changing. There was no gradual wade-in on a silty floor of muck. This pond required strong swimmers.

  “Nobody will see,” he said. “Nobody will care.”

  “Am . . .”

  He turned and kissed her then, her familiar taste mixed with spice from that ridiculous tea she’d been forcing on everyone. He was lost in her until he stopped, eyes closed, and took her hand and turned.

  “I love you,” he said to the air in front of him, walking.

  “You don’t. You’re only saying that now.” She stumbled a bit over a root in the path.

  “I think I know who I love,” he said, and turned back to smile at her.

  “Then stay with me. If you love me, stay.” With both hands she pulled him back, leaning her whole body toward the party.

  “Come with me now,” he said, dropping her hand, which made her stumble backward, but she didn’t fall.

  “This is all new to you, right?” she asked his back. “That’s why you’re being so cruel?”

  The word “cruel” gave him pause for only a second, and then he kept walking, willing her to follow him. He wanted a piece of her that he could take with him. If she’d say yes to this now, perhaps there was hope for them when he returned.

  He was two paces in front of her, not far at all, and yet he had to look back, compelled to know, right then, if she’d give in to him.

  When he glanced over his shoulder, her smile was beautiful.

  “Trust,” he said, as he tugged her into the little clapboard changing house. The women’s side had a fireplace hewn of river rock so ladies could warm up if the water was chilly. The inside smelled of moss, dark water, and dust. He laid his linen jacket down on the floor, and pulled her into his lap, her back to his chest. “You should trust me.”

  “I do.”

  “You don’t,” he said as he kissed her ear and hummed under her hair, taking in the musty smell of crushed flowers, her pale neck skin mixing with the violets wilting at her nape and the scent of the cool pond. “You don’t at all. That’s the problem.”

  “You’re the problem,” she said quietly.

  He ignored this as she turned and kissed him. Whether she was becoming eager or more confident, he couldn’t tell, and quickly didn’t care. He was lost in sensation.

  “Want this,” he said. It was his statement.

  She turned again, giving her back to him. She swallowed and nodded, looking straight ahead, not at him. “Yes.” She’d taken it as a question.

  He felt her breathing stop as he undid the first glittering button on the back of her dress and placed an openmouthed kiss at the top of her spine. He thought she’d stop him then, as she had before. But she exhaled, shifted against him, and then leaned forward, closing her eyes in surrender, or was it resignation? He undid each of the buttons down to her waist, each time smiling as he revealed more skin and lace. He realized that when no one was looking she’d give him everything. She’d give him the impossible.

  “You can stop me,” he said, though he knew she didn’t want him to stop. His hands roamed the silk at her waist. “One word will stop me.”

  “I know,” she said, turning around to sit sideways. She kissed him then, her hands in the hair at the nape of his neck, her tongue in his mouth.

  “I’ve wanted . . .” he said, but he lost himself in the electricity zinging through his veins.

  “What?” she asked, though she knew.

  “Just wanted.”

  She looked ladylike, sitting sideways in his lap, but also like a siren with the back of her dress open, a new fire in her eye. “Tell me.” She ran her hands down his shirt, across his chest, and started undo
ing the buttons. “Tell me what you’ve wanted.”

  “You. This. Everything,” he said, lying back and taking her with him.

  THE POND HOUSE

  Nell exits the men’s pond house and throws her cigarette in the water, immediately regretting it and hoping no one will see the butt marring the pristine dark surface. Back in Oregon, she allows herself one cigarette a week, agonizingly rationed. But as she lights a second and makes her way back to the party she thinks, Screw the gum today.

  After the meeting yesterday with Louis Morrell, Pansy and Emerson arm-twisted her into staying at the farm for the wake. Nell wishes now that she’d insisted on going to a hotel; at least then she’d have an escape hatch.

  At that thought, she veers off the trail to the house and heads for the old stucco tennis pavilion. She tells herself she’s not hiding, tells herself that this is the part of any party she likes best, whether attending or throwing. The sounds of the guests loudly chatting wafts across the field to her, punctuated by bright bursts of laughter as the drinks go down, and the clatter of food prep in the kitchen comes muted but clear from across the lawn.

  As a girl back home, upstairs in her bed during her parents’ dinner parties, drifting off to sleep to the murmur of adult conversation below, the yellow light from the front hall would cast a warm, dull glow in her room. She felt encompassed, protected, as if nothing was getting through that group of jolly suburban revelers and up the stairs to her room. Today Nell wishes she could lie down upstairs and listen to this party without having to attend; perhaps she’d feel safe again.

  She sits down on an upside-down five-gallon feed bucket, crosses her legs at the knee, and kicks her foot out at nothing as she finishes her toxins. Detox and retox, it’s how she copes when she’s back here.

  In the sixties Loulou had let some farm manager convince her to pen sheep on the clay tennis court. An ingenious way to save on fencing, he’d told her. Nell remembers running through the field with Pansy, who’d shown her how to cram tufts of grass through the fence to entice the sheep. Then, mustering all their young bravery, they’d snuck in and cornered one, daring each other to touch its rank woolly fleece.

  Now the old clay court was submerged under three feet of petrified sheep shit, well-fed weeds, and blooming wildflowers. Virginia creeper had long ago pulled down the fence.

  From the direction of the kitchen she hears Pansy directing the caterers with confidence. “They need more of those little BLT things out there. Please check the ice in the flower room. And where is Nell?”

  Nell has just enough time to stub out her cigarette and bury it in a nearby bag of potting soil before Pansy steps out on the lawn and takes the path to the sagging pavilion.

  “You really shouldn’t be out here. They’re not sure if the roof’ll hold.” Pansy wrinkles her nose. “Do I smell smoke?”

  “It’s the bacon from inside,” Nell says.

  “Thought you were sticking to gum,” Pansy says, sniffing again. “Come join us.” Pansy, always the insider. Nell, always in need of an invitation.

  Nell shoulders past her cousin, making for the mown path in the grass toward the kitchen.

  “Any ghosts out here?” Pansy examines the rafters of the little tennis house. “What. You remember that story Loulou used to tell.”

  Nell does remember. Loulou’s favorite story was of a deadly key and forbidden locks. It was outrageously scary for children and told with a certain sadistic glee.

  The first night they’d heard the story Pansy had begged their parents to let them sleep in the same room. The adults couldn’t resist her charming request for a cousin slumber party.

  Nell had lain awake listening to Pansy breathing, trying to decide if she was asleep or not. In an agony of fright, Nell had finally given in and whispered into the space between the twin beds in the Moorish room, “It can’t be true, right? That story?”

  She’d felt relief when Pansy hissed back reassuringly, not even making fun of her, “No way.” She’d heard the rustle of Pansy getting out of bed, the scrape of her narrow twin bed.

  Then she said, “Here, push yours.”

  Nell rose at once, relieved. They shoved the beds together until only the width of the spindly rails remained between them.

  This, of course, brought the warning steps of an adult up the stairs. The heavy tread down the corridor gave them more than enough time to dive under the covers and feign sleep.

  “What are you girls doing up here?” Her mother had been the adult sent to check on them. She squinted into the darkness, a glass in her hand. After taking in the scene she said, “Go to sleep now, or we’ll have to separate you.”

  She’d closed the door, but turned back with a mother’s instinct and left it ajar so a beam of light fell across the foot of their beds.

  “Here,” Pansy had said, reaching her hand toward Nell.

  Nell put her hand in Pansy’s and squeezed. They’d stayed like that until they’d fallen asleep, neither one remembering who’d been the first to let go.

  Now, Pansy overtakes her on the mown path back to the house. Pansy’s the first one through the door and lets it swing back in Nell’s face. Their girlhood gone, Nell can never pinpoint exactly when the end began. College and careers had made Pansy competitive. It’s been ages since either of them would bother to hold the door open for the other.

  The kitchen is small for a house as large as the Quincy farm, because it was meant for staff. Loulou had never so much as brewed herself coffee, had always employed a cook. A housekeeper was given free rein to remodel it in the sixties and had chosen the pressboard cabinets, the harvest gold Formica counters, and the avocado linoleum floor where plywood now shows through a few scuffed holes. Today the kitchen is hot and cramped with caterers.

  “I’m so sorry about your grandmother, honey.” One of the caterers offers a hand and then pulls Nell in for a surprise hug. “A great lady.”

  Nell smiles, but the woman has gotten it wrong. Nell isn’t the representative of the family. Why don’t they ever hug Pansy?

  “She was a handful, you know what I mean?” The caterer releases Nell and busies herself garnishing a Meissen platter with ham salad sandwiches. What was the woman’s name again? Carol, maybe? Carol wipes her eyes, actually tearing up. Nell braces herself for what’s coming.

  “Got so mad at me once over something. A roast not hot enough, I believe. I thought she was going to smash the whole platter on the floor. Instead she slammed it on the counter, chipped it. Expensive thing, I think. Just like this here. Didn’t tip me that night, either. She was a stickler.”

  Nell keeps her smile. She’s heard stories like this before, everyone in the family has, and she never knows how to respond. If she defends Loulou, Nell seems approving of her bad behavior. If she sympathizes with the speaker, it usually boomerangs, with the aggrieved party coming to Loulou’s defense, saying something admonishing like “With the elderly, they get a little cranky at the end. God bless, hope I live as long.”

  Nell pats the woman’s arm and makes a mental note to tip her double at the end of the afternoon. As executor, she’ll be shepherding the bills for all of this.

  Pansy walks Nell through the warren of rooms—kitchen, cold room, food pantry, butler’s pantry, warming room, and finally out into the main hall of the house, where the wake is in full swing.

  Someone has cranked up the ancient stereo and dragged the speakers into the front hall. “Help Me Rhonda” is playing, distorted and scratchy. Children take pictures with their phones as their parents do an ironic twist, while tiny cousins jump and squeal, delighted to see adults dancing. College-aged Quincys inspect the turntable, now chic in Williamsburg and Silver Lake. One of Pansy’s boys plays a violent game on a cell phone, slingshotting birds into pigs. The young parental generation drinks gin in the corners, wondering if this sort of thing is okay for a wake. Does one dance? Rensselaers and O’Brennans, Van Alstynes and Cavanaughs from every generation have turned out, lured by old kins
hip and friendship connections.

  “She would have hated this. Don’t you think?” A Cavanaugh aunt is standing next to Nell. She’s slim in heavy gold jewelry, with liver spots on her arms, which speak to an impressive golf handicap.

  Nell hums, unsure. Loulou had loved a party, but famously hadn’t cared for California. Nell had been surprised to find the Beach Boys record in the stack. “Nothing west of the Mississippi is worth a damn,” Loulou used to say.

  “I’ve met your new Van Alstyne cousin,” the golfing Cavanaugh aunt continues. Nell has only just met her, too. A lawyer who does complex transactional work at a big firm in Manhattan; at least they’d had something to talk about for a few minutes. The new bride seems nice enough, smart, and on her best behavior.

  “She seems very sure of herself,” the Cavanaugh aunt says in a conspiratorial tone. “Very confident.”

  It was just the sort of comment her mother would have mocked for months when they got back home.

  Before she’d left Portland, Nell had vowed to be proactive, to ask someone, and directly for once, about her mother’s rift with the family. Her mother’s mother, May Quincy, had died in childbirth. Loulou had stepped in when her widowed brother had proven too grief-stricken to care for a baby. It wasn’t surprising that her mother had felt like an outsider being raised by her aunt, and then Baldwin came along. Baldwin was Loulou’s born child, a boy, and the baby. He’d been a favored prince. Nell supposes it’s a straightforward enough story of rivalry once removed and amped up by circumstance.

  Nell had questioned her generation about it, but they were as clueless as she was about advanced family politics. Asking her uncle Baldwin had seemed an insurmountable task when she was younger, and her father is a dead end. She’s tried him a few times, and he gives her the same answers about the Quincys every time.

  “That’s not something you need to worry about,” he says. He blocks her attempts with “That’s not something we need to get into.” And once he even started to explain, “With her gone . . .” but didn’t finish.