Elin Hilderbrand - The Matchmaker

Dabney sucked down an East Beach Blonde from Rhode Island. CJ had made a big deal about ordering the oysters-again, just as Dabney had-but he had yet to eat a single one. The only oyster missing from his platter was the one he’d fed to Agnes. Dabney suspected that CJ didn’t even like oysters. He had ordered them only because Dabney had. And this, perhaps, got closer to what Dabney didn’t like about CJ. He reeked of insincerity; he did things just for show.

Dabney said, “Now you’re just being ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?” CJ said. “Let’s talk about ridiculous. Your daughter has been asking you for four years to come to New York, and for four years, you’ve said no…”

Dabney speared a Yaquina from Oregon, which was a tiny oyster, about the size of a quarter, but she almost couldn’t get it down. “As I’m sure Agnes has shared with you, I suffer from a bit of a phobia…”

CJ smacked his palm on the table. “You’re her mother and you’ve never come to see her.”

Agnes put her hand on CJ’s arm, but he brusquely shook it off. Did he hit her? Dabney suddenly wondered.

“And another thing,” he said. “Agnes told me that your crystal ball says we don’t belong together.”

“I don’t have a crystal ball,” Dabney said. “I wish I did.”

“Then I’m not sure what criteria you’re using to determine who’s a ‘perfect match.’”

“No criteria,” Dabney said.

“No crystal ball, no criteria,” CJ said. “I think your matchmaking is bullshit.”

“Well,” Dabney said, “you wouldn’t be alone in that opinion.” She sucked down a Wianno.

CJ pushed his platter of oysters at Agnes. “Here, honey,” he said. “You have them.”

Agnes gazed morosely at all the beautiful, fresh oysters, which were now swimming in slush.

“Or have a roll,” Dabney suggested again.

“We don’t eat carbs,” CJ said. “She’ll eat the oysters. Won’t you, baby?”

Their waiter came back to the table. “How are we doing?” he asked.

Dabney did not say, I hope my future son-in-law is drunk and NOT simply cruel, although I fear that’s the case. She did not say, Please bring me a glass of champagne or good white Bordeaux because I can’t make it another second without a drink. She did not say, He’s trying to make me feel like a bad mother, but I know what a bad mother is because I had one, and I am NOT a bad mother.

No, instead Dabney smiled at their server and thought, I have tried all nine oysters and they were delicious-sweet, creamy, briny, sublime. There is nothing more sublime than a cold, fresh oyster. She was slipping away, she could feel it, the green smoke was getting into her eyes and lungs.

“Everything’s fine,” she said. But it took effort.

As soon as the server sailed away, Dabney set her napkin on the table and said, “Excuse me, please.” She wasn’t feeling well, it was the green smoke, or it was the wheat allergy, perhaps, threatening to turn her insides to dust. The lives we lead, she thought.

“Darling?” Dabney said to Agnes. “I’m not feeling well. I think I just need air. I’ll meet you at home, okay?”

“Okay,” Agnes said. “Do you want us to go with you?”

“No, no,” Dabney said. She waved at CJ by way of goodbye and thought, Have a safe flight home with whisper whisper.

She hurried from the restaurant. She was lovesick, pure and simple.

She called Box as she walked up Main Street. He could hardly object; it was only seven thirty.

“Hello?” he said.

Dabney heard Mozart playing in the background and figured he was drinking a glass of white Bordeaux before he had dinner. Would he go out or cook for himself? Would he go out alone or with colleagues, or possibly with Miranda Gilbert? Dabney had been to his faculty apartment only twice in all the time he’d lived there, and she’d never spent the night.

“Darling?” she said.

“Yes? Dabney? Everything okay? Agnes arrived safely?”

“Safely,” Dabney said. “CJ drove her up.”

“Good man,” Box said.

“He’s not staying,” Dabney said. “Private plane back tonight with whisper whisper.”

“I’m sorry?” Box said.

“Apparently he’s developed an allergy to our house,” Dabney said. “Or he’s trying to punish me because I said he and Agnes aren’t a match. Or he’s trying to control Agnes.”

“Dabney,” Box said. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” Dabney said. “I’m not really okay at all.” She realized she was verging on histrionics, but she couldn’t help herself. What should she do? Tell Box about Clendenin?

“You need to pull yourself together, darling,” Box said. “Perhaps call Dr. Donegal?”

Dr. Donegal, her therapist. Box thought she was going mad.

Well, she was going mad.

“I don’t want you to go tomorrow, darling,” Dabney said. “I want you to cancel London. Please. Come back to Nantucket. Agnes is here, and…I’m here.”

“Cancel London?” Box said. “I’m sorry, darling, did you just ask me to cancel London?”

“Yes,” Dabney said. “Please.”

“You do realize this has been set up for the better part of a year,” Box said. “They can’t just find another lecturer. And Jesus, Dabney, they pay me a king’s ransom.”

“We don’t need any more money,” Dabney said. “I think we can both agree on that.”

“The money is hardly the point,” Box said. “It’s my reputation and my word and everything else. And you are overreacting. Something is bothering you, but my coming back to Nantucket isn’t the answer.”

Dabney was quiet.

Box said, “I’ll be back in two weeks, darling.”

He wasn’t going to cancel London. There was nothing Dabney could say or do. His reputation, his word, his brilliant and esteemed career in economics was on the line.

“You’re right,” Dabney said. “Of course, you’re right.”

“Get some rest,” Box said. “You’re overtired is my guess. And you’re looking too thin. Good meals and sleep, darling. I’ll be back before you know it.” With that, Box hung up.

Dabney reached home but did not go inside. She was spinning. She had eaten nine oysters but she was still hungry. There was chicken marinating in the fridge; she could throw it on the grill. Go into the house and grill the chicken, she thought.

She checked her phone. Quarter to eight.

Please? 8:00.

The lives we lead.

She climbed into the Impala and drove out the Polpis Road.

Box asked her to keep an eye on her mother while he was in London.

“She hasn’t been feeling well,” he said. “She’s been acting strangely.”

“Of course, Daddy,” Agnes said.

However, Dabney was so independent and Agnes so consumed with her own problems that it took a few days for Agnes to realize that her mother was acting strangely. Almost like she was hiding something.

On Agnes’s first day home, Dabney got up to go for her walk, as always, wearing her headband and pearls. She left the house as Agnes was fixing herself a cup of coffee with real cream. (Life’s joys were in the details; CJ took only skim milk in his coffee and he insisted that Agnes do the same, but CJ was now hundreds of miles away and Agnes wanted cream, dammit!)

By the time Dabney was dressed and ready for work, Agnes was at the table, eating a plate of scrambled eggs, whole-grain toast with homemade blueberry jam, and crisp bacon. This was, for her, a decadent breakfast. CJ always ate a power shake-spinach, wheat grass, seaweed. Agnes sometimes grabbed a Vitaminwater on the way to the subway, and on the weekends she ate half a grapefruit. As Agnes crunched a piece of bacon, she thought of how horrified CJ would be if he could see her stuffing her face, still in her pajamas at a quarter to eight, and she hadn’t exercised, hadn’t done so much as touch her toes. CJ was out the door every morning at six a.m. to run in Central Park and then go to the gym, and he liked Agnes to join him. He told her before she left that he feared she would fall away from her routine. His biggest fear, she supposed, was that she would return to him fat and lazy.

Agnes had assured him this wouldn’t happen. But as she snarfed down her delicious eggs, she realized that he had a right to be concerned. She had been home for less than twenty-four hours and was already being a slovenly pig. The thing was, it felt good.

Dabney said, “Honey, I would have made you breakfast.”

“I’m a grown woman, Mom,” Agnes said. “Do you want me to make you a piece of toast? I hogged everything else.”

“I’m happy to see you eating,” Dabney said. “You’re too thin.”

“You’re too thin.” Her mother’s clothes were hanging off her, and her cheekbones were jutting out. “Daddy says you’re not feeling well.”

“Wheat allergy, I think,” Dabney said.

“You and everyone else in the world,” Agnes said. “So I guess no toast for you.”

Dabney said, “I’m headed into the office. There’s a Business After Hours tonight at the Brotherhood, so I’ll be home late, after dinner. You’ll fend for yourself?”

“Of course,” Agnes said.

Dabney smiled, then kissed Agnes’s forehead. “I love you, darling. I’m so happy you’re here.”

Agnes had moved right back into her childhood bedroom, which her mother had redone as a guest room. There was an all-white king bed with navy accent pillows, and luscious, buttery pine furniture. The room was filled with light, and it was situated all by itself at the east end of the house. Agnes wasn’t sure what CJ found so objectionable about it.

Agnes missed CJ terribly-but at the same time, not at all. She could eat freely when she was away from him, and she could breathe freely. CJ was so perfect, so beautiful to look at, so confident in his manner, so successful in his business, and so absurdly generous, that Agnes wondered what exactly he saw in her. Agnes was young and pretty and she was a devoted do-gooder, but she had seen photographs of CJ’s ex-wife, Annabelle (Agnes had googled her, and had creeped her on Facebook and Twitter). Annabelle was as gorgeous as a model, her hair and makeup always perfect. She had sat on charitable boards and chaired events; she had been an actual socialite, with socialite friends who had apartments comprised of entire floors in Park Avenue prewar buildings, whereas Agnes lived in a one-bedroom walk-up on West Eighty-Fourth Street. CJ had lived on Park Avenue as well, but he had lost his apartment in the divorce, and then Annabelle had sold it and bought a waterfront property in Boca Raton, where she served on charitable boards, chaired events, and lived off CJ’s money.