Elin Hilderbrand - The Matchmaker

I said, “No, Dabney, I do not know Hal Green.”

Dabney said, “That’s good, that means he hasn’t had any run-ins with the law.”

I did not crack a smile. I knew what Dabney was up to.

She said, “I think you should meet Hal Green. I think you would like him.”

I said, “Oh, do you?”

Dabney said, “Come for dinner on Saturday. I’ll invite him.”

“Dabney.”

“Please,” she said. “Just come.”

Hal and I have been married for four years.

She was like Dabney twenty years earlier, Dabney as she had been standing on Steamship Wharf just before he left. But there was something else in this woman that grabbed at him: the hazel eyes, and a certain facial expression he had only ever seen in the mirror.

He clenched his right fist and felt his phantom left fist clench in unison; he felt his whole left arm in a way he hadn’t in months, except in dreams.

He couldn’t believe it.

“Agnes?” he said, his voice no more than a whisper.

“Yes,” she said.

It took some convincing to get her inside. He understood the urge to flee. It was scary and confusing, this reunion, unplanned, unexpected-but for him, not unhoped for.

He said, “Can I offer you a cup of coffee? Or some tea?”

She blinked at him.

He said, “I don’t bite.”

She barely moved her head, whether to indicate yes or no, he wasn’t sure.

He said, “I have bourbon.”

She turned off her car, a hybrid, more a toy than a car. Clen wondered what Eight-Cylinder Dabney thought about the Prius.

He poured two Gentleman Jacks, neat, and Agnes threw hers back without flinching. His daughter.

She said, “My mother comes here.”

He couldn’t tell if it was a question or not. “Yes,” he said. “We’re friends.”

“Friends,” Agnes said.

Clen downed his bourbon, then poured two more. He didn’t know how to proceed; he didn’t know what Dabney had told the girl.

He said, “How did you know to come here?”

She said, “That I can’t tell you.”

He laughed, not because she was funny but because she was so much like him. He felt like he was being born. His daughter, his child, his progeny, his DNA, his his his. How had he missed out on this until now? Tears stung his eyes. It was too much, it was overwhelming. He stared at the grain of the oak table. Agnes held her silence. Any other girl her age might have been shrill or hysterical, angry or dramatic.

Oh, Dabney, he thought. Forgive me, please.

He hadn’t realized what he had given up-not really-until now.

He said, “Does your mother know you’re here?”

“She does not.”

“Are you going to tell her you met me?”

“I haven’t decided yet.”

Clen said, “I answered your letter, years ago. I never heard back. Did you get my letter?”

“I did,” she said. “Thank you. It helped me to read it. It was enough.”

“It wasn’t close to enough,” Clen said. “You deserved much more.”

“Let’s not have that conversation right now,” Agnes said. “Okay?”

“Okay,” he said, relieved.

“I want to talk about you and my mother,” Agnes said.

The relief evaporated. “I think you should probably ask your mother.”

“I have asked my mother,” Agnes said. “She has been disappearing all summer long-leaving work for three- and four-hour stretches. She tells Nina she’s ‘running errands.’ A few weeks ago, I saw her by chance about a half mile from here, and when I asked her about it, she said she was going to have lunch at Sankaty.”

Clen nodded. Nobody who knew Dabney would believe Sankaty.

Agnes said, “That was bullshit, of course.”

Clen drank his second bourbon. He itched for a cigarette.

Agnes said, “She comes here to see you. She comes every day?”

“Not every day.”

“The two of you are…lovers?”

“Agnes…”

“The two of you are lovers, yes or no?” There was no anger in her voice, but her tone was uncompromising. She was demanding an answer. Was Clen supposed to tell her the truth, tell his daughter that yes, in fact, he and her mother were lovers?

“Yes,” he said.

Agnes said, “How long?”

Clen poured another bourbon even though the first two shots were making his head swim in one direction and his stomach swim in another. Another man might be able to have this conversation without alcohol, but he wasn’t that man.

“I moved back here at the end of April. It started a couple of weeks after that.”

“Oooooohweeeahhh!” Agnes said. Whether this utterance was one of surprise or horror or disapproval, Clen couldn’t tell.

He said, “Dabney and I are in love, Agnes. Deeply, truly, passionately in love. This was true for years before you were born, and continues to be true now. More so now that we have each lived lives that had nothing to do with each other. Dabney Kimball is my reason and my answer.” Here, his voice failed him, much to his shame. “I can’t let her go again.”

When she pulled out of the driveway of 436 Polpis Road, she was a different person.

Her mother’s secret revealed: Clendenin Hughes, her father.

Agnes had to tell someone. She couldn’t bear this revelation alone. When she emerged from Clendenin’s cottage, she found four voice mails from CJ on her phone. The first message was curious (“Where is my best girl?”); the second message terse (“Um…hello?” Click.) The third message, annoyed (“Jesus Christ, Agnes, answer the goddamned phone, would you, please?”). It was the fourth message that took Agnes’s breath away. CJ screamed with unbridled fury, “Where the fuck are you?”

She thought of Manny Partida: I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you…hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff…just please, Agnes, be careful. She recalled CJ’s facial expression as he watched Agnes’s hair being cut. He had been smug with his power over her.

Agnes deleted all the messages except for the last one. She couldn’t talk to CJ about meeting Clendenin. She couldn’t talk to CJ about anything, she realized, except for CJ.

She figured she was expected home for dinner-she hadn’t told Dabney otherwise-but she couldn’t sit at a table with Box and Dabney and eat and make chitchat.

Clendenin had asked Agnes not to say anything. He had begged her, even while realizing that he had no place to ask and even less reason for her to agree.

He said, “This is adult stuff.”

She stiffened. “I am an adult.”

“It’s between your mom and me. And it’s between your mother and the professor. You are an adult, and so I’m asking you to give your mother the time and space to figure her situation out.”

“Do you think she will?” Agnes asked.

“I do,” he said.

She had not expected the summer to be like this. There were secrets everywhere she looked.

Agnes called Riley and got his voice mail; she felt a wave of irrational anger overtake her. She needed Riley! There was no one else she could talk to! Except, possibly, Nina Mobley. Should Agnes call Nina Mobley? As Agnes was considering this, her phone rang. It was Riley.

“Hey,” he said. “Sorry, I just got done surfing.”

“Where are you?” Agnes asked.

“Antenna Beach,” he said.

“Stay there,” she said. “I’m going to grab a couple of sandwiches. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

“I’m supposed to meet Celerie at the movies,” he said. “It’s Diablo Cody week at the Dreamland and they’re showing Juno tonight. Celerie said it’s her favorite movie. She’s been calling me ‘Bleek’ for the past three days.”

“Is there any way you can cancel her?” Agnes said. She felt like a big jerk for asking, but this was an emergency like none Agnes could have dreamed of. “I really need to talk.”

“I’ll cancel her,” Riley said.

Less than an hour later, Agnes and Riley were drinking beer, eating lobster rolls, and watching the sun go down. They were sitting in the open air of Riley’s Jeep on the lip of the beach. Riley was still in his wet suit, although he had peeled off the top half, so Agnes had a fine view of his shoulders, chest, and abs. She felt ashamed for even looking. There were two new voice mails from CJ on Agnes’s phone, but she hadn’t listened to them yet.

“Was Celerie upset you canceled?” Agnes asked.

“Devastated,” Riley said. “But she didn’t cry. She said she would make her roommate go. She said she hoped the friend I needed to talk to knew how lucky she was.”

“You didn’t tell her it was me, did you?”

“I did not tell her it was you,” Riley said. “But who else would it be?”

Agnes sighed. She couldn’t have Celerie getting wind of this situation. No no no.

Riley said, “So what’s up?”

Agnes said, “I followed your tip and went to 436 Polpis Road.”

Riley said, “And what did you find?”

Agnes said, “My father. My biological father, whom I’ve never met. Until today.”

Riley sipped his beer and stared out at the wild, churning ocean. “What did I tell you the first time I met you? What was my exact phrase, Agnes? Tip of the iceberg.”

“Yes,” Agnes said. “You were right about that.” And then she explained: Clendenin Hughes, whom Agnes had never met, who had led a life on the other side of the world, who had won a Pulitzer Prize, who had lost his left arm in pursuit of a story, who had returned to Nantucket three months earlier, was Dabney’s secret. He was her lover.

“So,” Riley said. “What is he like?”

What was Clendenin Hughes like? Agnes hadn’t spent enough time with him to know, really. The word that first came to mind was complex. She had looked at him and seen a funnel of swirling thoughts and emotions. Clendenin had not come back to the United States and lived a life as Dabney’s husband and Agnes’s father. Your mother didn’t want that, he said. She wanted to go it alone. But he knew that, deep down, Dabney had wanted him. A stronger man, a better man, would have done the right thing and come home. Clendenin could claim no honor. He had been consumed with shame and regret, he’d told her, and for days and months and years, that shame had been the most powerful thing in his life. He’d made it clear that he was not in a position to ask for Agnes’s forgiveness. But Clendenin also said that the only reason he had come back to Nantucket was because Dabney was there.