The Castaways

PHOEBE

She had done the unthinkable.

An invitation had come for a Fourth of July party on Hulbert Avenue, a big, splashy party thrown by summer resident Caroline Nieve Masters, and Phoebe had accepted.

Caroline and Phoebe had served together on the board of directors of the Atheneum a decade earlier; they had been friends. In the intervening years, since September 11, when Phoebe resigned from the Atheneum board and the two other boards she sat on, she and Caroline had lost touch. There had been one awkward encounter when Caroline saw Addison and Phoebe out to dinner at 21 Federal, and she had approached the table cheerfully and asked Phoebe if she would consider sitting on the Circus Flora committee. Phoebe and Addison were out celebrating Phoebe’s thirty-fifth birthday, which was also Reed’s thirty-fifth birthday, but Reed would not be turning thirty-five because he was dust, and to compensate for this fact Phoebe had taken three valiums and, to numb herself further, one of the contraband pills that she had gotten from Brandon, which Brandon referred to only as the Number Nine. Throw in a glass and a half of the outrageously expensive Mersault that Addison had ordered to blur his own edges and you had Phoebe in such a haze that she was barely able to keep her head off the table. She looked at Caroline, but did not see her. She spoke, but did not say anything intelligible.

Caroline seemed confused. Addison said, “Phoebe is trying to keep her plate clear these days.”

Caroline said of course, she understood, and beat a hasty retreat. Phoebe had not heard from her since, and had seen her only in passing. Just like the rest of the women from her previous life.

So the invitation came as a surprise. And even more unlikely was the burst of anticipation Phoebe felt. She wanted to go to this party. She asked Addison if they could go to Caroline Masters’s party on the Fourth and he looked at her dully, then shrugged. Addison was the emotionally hobbled one now. Since Greg and Tess had died, he had done little more than drink whiskey, stare out the window, and cry in his sleep.

Phoebe couldn’t help him. He was on his own. Phoebe had not been able to grieve for Greg and Tess since her outburst in the Galley parking lot. She had used up her sadness and horror and now she was empty. If anything, she felt better than she had in years. It was backward. She felt almost normal. She looked at her bottles of scrips and thought, I really don’t need these. But she took them anyway, just in case.

The best thing about Caroline Masters’s party was that it would be a reprieve from the torrent of misery about Tess and Greg. Caroline Masters hadn’t known Tess and Greg, and her fancy New York friends and Nantucket summer neighbors hadn’t known Tess and Greg, nor did they know that Phoebe had lost friends named Tess and Greg. Phoebe would be free.

She bought a red cocktail dress at Eye of the Needle and made a hair appointment. And at six o’clock on the Fourth, when Addison slumped in the club chair with his Jack Daniels and turned on Wimbledon, Phoebe declared that if he wasn’t going to shower and change, she would go by herself.

Fine, he said. Go.

He was saying it as a challenge, a dare. He thought she would chicken out. Phoebe had not been out at night without Addison since Reed died. But tonight, yes, she would go, with or without him. It was so weird, the way she felt. She felt reborn, as though she had been preserved in ice all these years and was just now thawing out. She felt liberated! She could not help Addison with his grief, but she could be kind. After all, he had stuck by her for years and years.

“You’re sure you don’t want to come?” she said. “It will be fun, Add. Swede and Jennifer will probably be there. And their friend Hank. We used to have fun with them, remember? Maybe Hank will invite us on his boat again.”

“No boats,” Addison said. He was like an autistic person, with his short sentences repeated over and again. The phrase he muttered most often under his breath, which Phoebe knew she wasn’t supposed to hear, was, He killed her.

Meaning Greg killed Tess. But Phoebe had a different idea about that.

“Okay, no boats,” she said. No sailing, no sailboats, no boats of any kind. “Sorry.” Dealing with Addison now was like dealing with a child. He was so drunk all the time that she had to undress him most nights, direct him to the shower, and put him to bed. The more she thought about it, the more firmly she believed that it would be a terrible idea to drag Addison to this party. He would drink too much and embarrass them both.

Phoebe kissed the top of his bald head. “I’m going. I’ll be home… well, when I get home.”

He nodded, then muttered something she didn’t hear, and she didn’t ask him to repeat it.

She was free! She was (slightly) high on her happy pills and she had drunk a slender flute of champagne in the bathroom as she dressed, and these combined to provide a warm, optimistic buzz. She was suffused with the holiday spirit. What was that song she and Reed had blared in high school? Hey, baby, it’s the Fourth of July! Their father, Phil, had bought them a bona-fide mail Jeep and presented it to them on their sixteenth birthday. It had a cassette deck and crummy speakers, which they pushed to the limit. Phoebe had her license, but she always let Reed drive. Who knows where they had ever been headed, but Phoebe could say for certain that those rides with Reed driving and the window open to the dairyland smell of the Wisconsin dusk and the music blaring had been the happiest rides of her life.

She felt almost that happy now.

When Phoebe found out about Addison and Tess, she thought it was just a sex thing. She was no dummy. She understood men’s needs, and since for years she had been unable to climax, she assumed that Addison would discreetly go elsewhere. Phoebe had gotten the tip-off from Addison’s receptionist, Florabel, about the cottage in Quaise. Addison “showed the cottage to clients” several times a week, Florabel said, but strangely, no one ever wanted to rent it. When Phoebe went to look for Addison there (“He’s there all the time,” Florabel said), she saw Tess’s car parked in the dirt driveway. Phoebe could not believe it, so she had tiptoed right up to the window and had seen them together. Through a little detective work, she figured out that Addison and Tess were in love. Phoebe had been too hampered by the confines of her own mind to summon the anger she knew she was supposed to feel about this. Instead she watched (silently, secretly) as their love unfolded. She watched it like a TV program. Addison was more in love than Tess was; Phoebe could tell the affair was going to end badly. As indeed it had.

Traffic was being redirected at Hulbert Avenue. It was a mess, and Phoebe feared her good mood would be thwarted by something as mundane as a long and winding detour. But there, standing on the corner in his spiffy black-and-white uniform, was the Chief. Phoebe rolled down her window.

“Ed!” she cried. “Eddie!”

He smiled and came striding over. Phoebe adored the Chief. He had gone to Ground Zero to help in the search effort. He had seen it firsthand, he had spent a week inhaling the toxic fumes, he had dealt with one one-trillionth of the debris. He felt one one-trillionth of Phoebe’s pain, but that was more than anyone else.

“Where are you going?” he said. “Where’s Addison?”

“He’s at home,” she said. “I’m going to the party on Hulbert.”

“President Clinton is going to that party,” the Chief said. “Which explains why this mess is even bigger than the usual mess. I’ll have one of my guys wave you through.”

“Thanks, Eddie,” she said.

“Anything for you, babe,” he said. He winked and made a clicking noise. She loved him. She feared that one day he would be gravely disappointed in her, but she wasn’t going to let that ruin her good mood right now.

She drove past with a wave.

At the party, there was champagne served from a tray and yummy things to eat: crab cakes, corn fritters, oysters, tenderloin on French bread, phyllo filled with spinach and feta, stuffed mushrooms. Phoebe was eating more at this party than she’d eaten since her sophomore year in high school. A band played Sinatra, Bobby Darin, Boz Scaggs. Phoebe saw people she knew but had not seen in centuries.

You’re back! Where have you been?

Oh, I’ve been around, she said. She would have to come up with a better answer. She would tell people she had taken eight years in silence at a Buddhist monastery. She had been in the South of France, or Santa Fe; she had been on Martha’s Vineyard! When Caroline Masters saw Phoebe, she took her by the arm and escorted her around. Reintroduced her.

This gorgeous creature is Phoebe Wheeler, the best cochair I ever had.

Phoebe met President Clinton! He asked her where she was from and she said, “I live on the island year-round. My husband owns a real estate agency here. But I was born and raised in Whitefish Bay, outside Milwaukee.”

Milwaukee! President Clinton loved Wisconsin, loved White-fish Bay, loved this certain kind of cheddar they made at the university, loved the Green Bay Packers. Brett Favre had been to the White House twice during his administration.

After the president moved on, Phoebe was swamped. People seemed to be standing in line to talk to her. Swede and Jennifer monopolized her. They had missed her so much! Remember all those Sunday sails on Hank’s boat? Jennifer asked Phoebe if she would cochair a cocktail party for Island Conservation, to be held out on the savannah in August. I know you’ve dialed back, but…

Phoebe panicked. She felt like she was falling. Reed! Her feet were numb with frostbite. She was stuck in the snow and could not move her arms or legs; she could not reach her cell phone. Phoebe’s excellent mental health this evening had been an illusion; it was some kind of spell that was now wearing off.

Phoebe opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out. She felt like a fish.

The Chief had been at Ground Zero. He got it. He had seen it and smelled it. Addison had never understood, but he had stuck with her. He had stood by her until Tess. Okay, see, Phoebe needed to get hold of herself. She should not be thinking of Reed and she should not be thinking of Tess. She was at a lovely, upbeat social function on a beautiful evening and she was being asked a simple question. Cochair a cocktail party on the savannah for Island Conservation? In her previous life, this would have been a layup.

But what about now? Was she a normal person? Could she do it?

“I’d love to help,” Phoebe said. “Call me.”

Jennifer was happy. Her husband, Swede, was happy. Their friend Hank who had a billion dollars and that beautiful sailboat was happy. Hank was there with his new French girlfriend, Legris, who complimented Phoebe on her dress.

Jack, who had given Addison the keys to his house in Stowe last Christmas, approached Phoebe and asked her to dance. Again Phoebe felt like she was being pushed right to the edge of what she was capable of. She was going to fall…

Dance?

“They’re playing ‘Mack the Knife,’” Jack said.

She loved “Mack the Knife.” She would dance. She would watch the fireworks. She did not have to think about Reed or about Tess and Greg, or even about Addison. She was a person having fun.

She was getting better.