The Love Season Part 4

When she walked into the kitchen, she found Miles at the counter making a ham sandwich.

"Hey," he said. His favorite syllable. Employable in any situation, Renata now understood.

"Hey," she said. "I'm on my way out."

"Where to?" he said.

"Beach."

"Here?"

"I have no wheels," she said. "So, yes."

"That little beach is c.r.a.p," he said. "And the water isn't clean. You notice Mr. D. keeps his Contender anch.o.r.ed offsh.o.r.e."

"It's not clean?" Renata said. "Are you sure?" More than anything, she wanted to swim.

"You should come with me," Miles said. "I'm just about to head out. I have the afternoon off."

"Well, I don't," Renata said. "I'm supposed to meet the family at the yacht club in an hour."

Miles rolled his eyes, and even then he was dazzling. Tall, broad shouldered, tan, with brown hair lightened by the sun, blue eyes, and a smile that made you think he was born both happy and lucky. "Blow off lunch," he said. "Cade and Mr. D. won't be there."

"You don't think?"

"Day like this?" Miles said. "Mr. D. will sail all afternoon. He won't have many more days on the water if he gets any worse."

Renata checked the horizon. She wished she was sailing herself, but she hadn't been invited. Cade had hung her out to dry this morning-but would he really stick her at lunch with only his mother? Renata could imagine nothing worse, today of all days, than lunch alone with Suzanne Driscoll.

"Where are you going?" Renata asked.

"The south sh.o.r.e," he said. "Madequecham."

"Made-" Renata tripped over the word; she had never actually spoken it out loud. Madequecham was the Native American name for a valley along the south sh.o.r.e, but to Renata the word meant her mother, dead. She nearly said this to Miles. My mother was killed in Madequecham. So no thanks, I think I'll pa.s.s. Except it was turning out to be a strange day, unpredictable, and Renata found that a trip to Madequecham satisfied many, if not all, of her immediate needs. She wanted out of this house. She wanted to bask in the friendly attention of Miles, however perfunctory, and on a more serious and substantial note, she wanted to see for herself the place where her mother had been killed. Was that morbid? Maybe. It was a secret desire, part and parcel of a larger belief: that somehow once Renata understood her mother's life and death, a fog would lift. Things that had been obscured from her would become clear.

"Come on," Miles said. He dangled a piece of sliced ham over the bread in a dainty way, like the queen with her handkerchief. He was trying to be funny. "I'll have you back here before Cade even gets home. Say, three o'clock."

"I'd like to go," Renata said apologetically. Strangely, what was holding her back was a factor she would have claimed in public not to care about: Suzanne Driscoll's disapproval.

"Whatever," Miles said. "Suit yourself."

Renata was getting a headache. Only eleven o'clock and already so much pressing down on her. Suzanne and her list, her father and his bizarre endors.e.m.e.nt. They thought they could manipulate her. Well, guess what? They could not. And Cade, perhaps, was the worst perpetrator of all. He had told her they would be going to the beach together today, and yet he'd deserted her. Resolution must have fixed itself on her face, because Miles said, "Do you want me to make you a sandwich?"

"Yes," Renata said. "I'm coming."

11:45 A.M.

Almost noon and still so much to do! And Marguerite was exhausted. She put away the groceries and the champagne. She tucked her new, ridiculous umbrella into the dark recesses of her front closet. She checked on her bread dough-it was puffed and foamy, risen so high that it strained against the plastic wrap. Marguerite floured her hands and punched it down, enjoying the hiss, the release of yeasty stink. She had several things to do before she headed out to the Herb Farm. She would delay that trip for as long as possible, because she was afraid to see Ethan. He fell into the category of people she loved, but the connection between them was too painful. Maybe, like Fergus and Eliza at the liquor store, he would be out, leaving a teenager, a college student, someone Marguerite didn't know, in his place. She could always hope.

But for now, the aioli. Garlic, egg yolks, a wee bit of Dijon mustard. In her Cuisinart she whipped these up to a brilliant, pungent yellow; then she added olive oil in a steady stream. Here was the magic of cooking-an emulsion formed, a rich, garlicky mayonnaise. Salt, pepper, the juice of half a lemon. Marguerite scooped the aioli into a bowl and covered it with plastic.

She barely made it through the marinade for the beef. Her forehead was burning; she felt hot and achy, dried up. She whisked together olive oil, red wine vinegar, sugar, horseradish, Dijon, salt, and pepper and poured it over the tenderloin in a shallow dish. Marguerite's vision started to blotch; amorphous yellow and silver blobs invaded the kitchen.

I can't see, she thought. Why can't I see? The grandfather clock struck noon, the little monkey inside having a field day with his cymbals. As the twelve hours crashed around Marguerite like Ming vases. .h.i.tting the tile floor, she realized what her problem was. She hadn't eaten a thing all day. All that walking on only two cups of coffee. So her symptoms weren't due to brain cancer or Alzheimer's or Lou Gehrig's disease, three things Marguerite feared only remotely, since there was very little to keep her clinging to life-though somehow, the event of tonight's dinner had sparked promise and hope in Marguerite in a way that made her relieved that she wasn't sick, only hungry. She pulled a box of shredded wheat from the pantry and doused it with milk. It was cool and crunchy, pleasing. The clock stopped its racket; Marguerite tried to coerce her vision clear by blinking. She might have sunstroke, despite the valiant efforts of her wide-brimmed hat. She drank a gla.s.s of water, slowly made inroads on her cereal. The journey out to the Herb Farm intimidated her; she could sacrifice quality, maybe, and simply return to the A&P for the herbs and goat cheese, the eggs, the asparagus, the fleurs. Then she laughed, derisively, at the mere thought.

Forget everything else for now, she thought. I need to lie down.

She was so warm that she stripped to her bra and underpants, double-triple-checking the shutters to make certain absolutely no one could see in. (It was the mailman she was worried about, with his irregular hours.) And even then she felt too odd lying on top of her bed like a laid-out corpse, and so she covered herself with her summer blanket.

Too much walking around in the August sun. That and not enough food, not enough water. And then, too, there was all the thinking she had done about the past. It wasn't healthy, maybe, to go back and float around in those days. In fourteen years she hadn't indulged in the past as much as she had in the last twelve hours. It hadn't seemed productive or wise, because Marguerite had a.s.sumed that thinking about the things she had lost would make her unbearably sad. But for some reason today the rules were suspended, the logic reversed. Today she thought about the past-the whole big, honest past-and how she might, tonight, explain it to Renata, and it made her proud in a strange way. Proud to be lying here. Proud that she had survived.

The restaurant had been open for four summers before Marguerite felt the floor stabilize under her feet. She meant this both figuratively and literally. She had spent thousands of dollars getting the restaurant to look the way she wanted it to-which was to say, cozy, tasteful, erudite. She wanted the atmosphere to reflect a cross between Nantucket, whose aesthetics were new to her-the whaling-rich history of the town, the wild, pristine beauty of the moors, the beaches, the sea-and Paris with its sleek sophistication. Marguerite had decided to keep the exposed brick wall at Porter's insistence (this very feature was a major selling point for Manhattan apartments), and she refurbished the fireplace in the bar, installing as a mantelpiece a tremendous piece of driftwood that Porter had found years earlier up at Great Point. (He'd kept it in the backyard of his rental house, much to the chagrin of the house's owners, as he waited for a purpose to reveal itself.) To balance the rustic nature of the driftwood, Marguerite insisted on a zinc bar, the only one on the island. But threatening to throw the whole enterprise off were the floors. They slanted; they sloped; they were tilted, uneven. She had to fix the floors. She couldn't have waitstaff carrying six entree plates on a tray over their heads walking across this tipsy terrain, and she didn't want people eating their meals in a room that felt like a boat lurched to one side. The floors were made of a rare and expensive wormy chestnut; she was afraid she would damage them if she pulled them up and tried to level the underflooring, and so Marguerite opted for the longer, more arduous process of lifting the building and squaring the foundation.

Marguerite's efforts paid off. The s.p.a.ce evolved; it became unique and inviting. She loved the bar; she loved the fireplace and the two armchairs where very lucky (and prompt) customers could hunker down with a c.o.c.ktail and one of the art history books or Colette novels that Marguerite kept on a set of built-in shelves. She loved the dining room, which she'd painted a deep, rich Chinese red, and she hoped that customers would fight over the three most desirable tables-the two deuces in front of the windows that faced Water Street and, for bigger parties, the west banquette.

However, even with all this in place and precisely to Marguerite's specifications, it took a while for the people of Nantucket to get it. At first, Marguerite was viewed as a wash-ash.o.r.e-some fancy woman chef with a checkered background. Was she French? No, but she peppered her conversation with pretentious little French phrases, and she spoke with some kind of affected accent. Was she from New York? She had worked in the city at La Grenouille-some people pretended to remember her from there, though she had never once set foot in the dining room during service-and she had been educated at the Culinary Inst.i.tute in Hyde Park, but somehow she didn't quite qualify as a New Yorker. Her only saving grace seemed to be her connection to Porter. Porter Harris was a much-appreciated fixture on the Nantucket social scene; he had rented the same house on Polpis Road since graduating from college in the early sixties. When Porter spoke, people listened because he was charming and convivial, he could single-handedly save a c.o.c.ktail party, and he was famous for his extravagant taste in art, in food, in women. He liked to tell people that he could look at Botticelli and Rubens all day and move on to Fragonard and the French Rococo all evening. Nothing was too rich or too fine for him. He claimed to have "unearthed a jewel" on a trip to Paris, and that "jewel" was Marguerite. The restaurant Les Parapluies was named after a Renoir painting. (For the first two summers, a good-quality reproduction hung over the bar, but then it came to seem obvious and Marguerite replaced it with a more intriguing piece, also of umbrellas, by local artist Kerry Hallam.) The restaurant served only one fixed menu per day at a price of thirty-two dollars not including wine, and this confounded people. How could one meal possibly be worth it? Porter was instrumental in those early years in filling the room. He lured in other Manhattanites, other academics, intellectuals, theater people on break from Broadway, artists from Sconset with sizable trust funds, and the wealthy people who looked to the aforementioned to set the trends. These people realized after one summer, then two, then three of unforgettable meals that anyone who worried they wouldn't like the food was worrying for no reason. This woman whom no one could figure out wasn't much to look at (or so said the women; the men were more complimentary, seeing in Marguerite's solid frame and long, long hair an earth mother)-but boy, could she cook!

It hadn't been easy to win Nantucket over, but at some point during that fourth summer it all came together. The restaurant was full every weekend, Marguerite had a loyal group of regulars who could be counted on at least twice during the week, and the bar was busy from six thirty when it opened (and sometimes a line formed outside, people who wanted to vie for the armchairs) until after midnight. Marguerite's questionable pedigree flipped itself into a mystique; the local press came sniffing, asking for interviews, which she declined, enhancing her mystique. People started recognizing Marguerite on the street; they claimed her as a friend; they announced Les Parapluies as the finest restaurant on the island.

People grew accustomed to her unusual accent (it was a combination of her childhood in Cheboygan and the lilting French-accented English she mimicked from her ballet teacher, Madame Verge, which was later reinforced by so much time in French-speaking kitchens)-but increasing speculation surrounded her relations.h.i.+p with Porter. As the rumors went, he had lured her to Nantucket from Paris and he had bought her the restaurant. (On this last point, Marguerite liked to set the record straight: She bought the restaurant alone; hers was the only name on the deed.) People knew that Porter and Marguerite lived together in the cottage on Polpis Road, and yet summers pa.s.sed and no ring appeared; no announcement was made. The inquiries and critical glances of the clientele made Marguerite uneasy. The relations.h.i.+p between her and Porter was n.o.body's business but hers and Porter's.

The summers in the cottage on Polpis Road were good and simple. Marguerite and Porter slept in a rope bed; they used only the outdoor shower, whose nozzle was positioned under a trellis of climbing roses. They ate cold plums and rice pudding for breakfast, and then Marguerite left for work. Porter went to the beach, played tennis at the yacht club, read his impenetrable art history journals in the hammock on the front porch. He stopped in at the restaurant frequently. How many times had Marguerite been working at the stove when he came up behind her and kissed her neck? She had the burns to prove it. When Porter couldn't stop by, he called her-sometimes to tell her who he'd seen in town, what he'd heard, what he'd read in The Inquirer and Mirror. Sometimes he used a funny voice or falsetto and tried to make a reservation. They spent an hour or two together at home between prep and service-they tended a small vegetable garden and a plot of daylilies; they listened to French conversation tapes; they made love. They showered together under the roses; Porter washed her hair. They had a gla.s.s of wine; they touched gla.s.ses. "Cheers," they said. "I love you."

They were lovers. Marguerite adored the word-implying as it did a flexible, European arrangement-and she hated it for the same reason. Despite all the days of their idyllic summers, Porter could not be pinned down. When autumn arrived, Porter went back to Manhattan, back to work, back to school, back to his brownstone on West Eighty-first Street, back to his life of students and research and benefits at the Met, lectures at the Ninety-second Street Y, dinners at other French restaurants-with other women. Marguerite knew he saw other women, she suspected he slept with them, and yet she was terrified to ask, terrified of that conversation and where it might lead. On a spring afternoon in Paris, she had given him the word free, and she felt obligated to stick with it. If Porter discovered that freedom was not what she wanted, if he found out that what she craved was to be the opposite of free-married, hitched, bound together-he would leave her. She would lose the beautiful summers; she would lose the only lover she had ever had.

Marguerite's childhood contained one lasting memory, and that was of her ballet lessons with Madame Verge. Marguerite took the lessons in a studio that had been fas.h.i.+oned in Madame Verge's large Victorian house in the center of town. The studio was on the second floor. Walls had been knocked down to create a rectangular room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors, a barre, and a grand piano played by Madame Verge's widowed brother. Marguerite started with the lessons when she was eight. For three years, on Friday afternoons, she ascended the stairs in her black leotard, pink tights, and scuffed pink slippers, every last strand of her hair pinched into a bun. Madame Verge was in her sixties. She had dyed red hair, and her lipstick bled into the wrinkles around her mouth. She was not a beautiful woman, but she was, because she was completely herself. She wanted all her girls to look the same, to hold themselves erect, shoulders back, chins up. Feet in one of five positions. She did not tolerate sloppy feet. Marguerite could easily picture herself as a girl in that room on a Friday afternoon-some days were muggy with autumn heat; some days had ice tapping on the windows. She stood with the other girls in front of the mirrored wall, deeply plieing as Madame Verge's brother played Mozart. She danced. There was a sense of expectation among the girls in Madame Verge's cla.s.s that they were special. If they kept their chins up, their shoulders back, if they kept their feet disciplined, if their hair was caught up, every strand, neatly, then they would earn something. But what? Marguerite had a.s.sumed it was adoration. They would be darlings; they would be cherished, loved by one man for the rest of their lives; they would become someone's star.

Free, Marguerite had told Porter. But she had been lying, and the lie would cost her dearly.

During the first autumn of Porter's absence, Marguerite traveled to Manhattan to surprise him. She showed up on a Wednesday when she knew he didn't have cla.s.ses. It was November, chilly, gray; the charms of autumn in the city were rapidly fading. Marguerite had paid a king's ransom on cab fare from LaGuardia; she was dropped in front of Porter's brownstone just before noon. The brownstone was beautiful, well kept, with a black wrought-iron fence and a mighty black door. On the door was a polished bra.s.s oval that said: HARRIS. Marguerite rang the bell; there was no answer. She walked to the corner and called the house from a pay phone. No answer. She called Porter's office at the university, but the secretary informed Marguerite that Professor Harris did not teach or meet with students on Wednesdays. Once Marguerite revealed her ident.i.ty, the secretary disclosed the fact that on Wednesdays Professor Harris played squash and ate lunch at his club. These lunches, the secretary said, sotto voce, sometimes included four or five men, sometimes got a bit out of hand, sometimes lasted well into the evening. Marguerite hung up, thinking, What club? She hadn't even known Porter belonged to a club. There was no way to locate him. She set about entertaining herself with lunch at a hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese restaurant while reading the Post, followed by a substantial wander around the Upper West Side. She was sitting, hunched over and nearly frozen, on the top step of Porter's brownstone when up strolled Himself, in his camel-hair coat and Burberry scarf, his bald pate revealed in the stiff breeze, the tips of his ears red with the cold. Marguerite almost didn't recognize him. He looked older in winter clothes, minus his tan and aura of just-off-the-tennis-court good health. Porter, under the influence of who knew how many martinis, took a b.u.mbling step backward, squinting at Marguerite's form in the gathering dark.

"Daisy?" he said. She stood up, feeling cold, tired, and utterly stupid. He opened his arms and she went to him, but his embrace felt different; it felt brotherly. "What on earth are you doing here? You should have called me."

Of course he was right-she should have called. But she had wanted to take him by surprise; it was a test, of sorts, and she could see right away that he was going to fail or she was or they were.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"You don't have to be sorry," he said. "How long can you stay?" The question contained a tinge of worry; she could hear it, though he did his best to try to make it sound like excited interest.

"Just until tomorrow," she said quickly. In truth, she had packed enough clothes for a week.

His face brightened. He was relieved. He wheeled her toward the front door and held on to her shoulders as they trudged up the stairs. "I have just enough time for a celebratory drink," he said. "But then, unfortunately, I have to make an appearance down at Avery Fisher. I can't possibly get out of it. And I don't have a spare ticket." He squeezed her. "I'm sorry, Daisy. You should have called me."

"I know," she said. She was close to tears, thirty-three years old and as naive as she had been at eight, with her k.n.o.bby knees, standing in front of Madame Verge's mirrored wall. She felt she would break into pieces. Did he not remember the one hundred days of their summer? The one hundred nights they had spent sleeping together in the rope bed? They had made love everywhere in that cottage: on the front porch, on the kitchen table. He was always so hungry for her; those were his words. The only thing that kept Marguerite together was the keen interest she felt when the door to his brownstone swung open. This was his home, a part of him she'd never seen.

Porter's house was all she imagined. It was both cla.s.sic and eclectic, the house of an art history professor-so many books, so many framed prints, and a few original sketches and studies, perfectly lit-and yet scattered throughout were Porter's crazy touches: a vase of peac.o.c.k feathers, an accordion lying open in its case.

"Do you play the accordion?" Marguerite asked.

"Oh yes," he said. "Very badly."

Marguerite wandered from room to room, picking up objets, studying photographs. There were two pictures of her and Porter: one of them in Paris in their wigs at Pere Lachaise Cemetery (the picture was blurry; the boy who had taken it had been stoned) and one of them in front of Les Parapluies on its opening night. There were pictures of Porter with other women-but only in groups, and no one face appeared more than any other. Or was Marguerite missing something? She didn't want to appear to be checking too closely. Porter appeared with a drink, a flute of something pink and bubbly.

"I've kept this on hand for a very special occasion," he said, kissing her. "Such as a surprise visit from my sweet Daisy."

She wanted to believe him. But the fact was, things were stilted between them. Porter, who had never in his life run out of things to say, seemed reserved, distracted. Marguerite tried to fill the void, she tried to sparkle, but she couldn't quite capture Porter's attention. She talked about the restaurant-it felt like the only thing they had in common but also sadly irrelevant, here in the city-then she told him she'd been reading Proust (which was a bit of a stretch; she'd gotten through ten pages, then put it down, frustrated)-but even Proust didn't get Porter going. He was somewhere else. As the first gla.s.s of champagne went down, followed quickly by a second, Marguerite wondered if they would make love. But Porter remained seated primly on the divan, halfway across the room. And then, he looked at his watch.

"I should get ready," he said.

"Yes," she said. "By all means."

He vanished to another part of the house, his bedroom, she presumed, and she couldn't help but feel crushed that he didn't ask her to join him. They had showered together under the roses; he had washed her hair. Marguerite finished her second gla.s.s of champagne and repaired to the kitchen to fill her gla.s.s a third time. When she opened the refrigerator, she found a corsage in a plastic box on the bottom shelf.

"Oh," she said. She closed the door.

A while later, Porter emerged in a tuxedo, smelling of aftershave. Now that he was about to make his escape, he seemed more himself. He smiled at her, he took her hands in his, and rubbed them like he was trying to start a fire. "I'm sorry about this," he said. "I really wish I'd had a moment's notice."

"It's my fault," Marguerite said.

"What will you do for dinner?" he said. "There's a bistro down the street that's not half-bad with roast chicken. Do you want me to call right now and see if I can reserve you a seat at the bar?"

"I'll manage," she said.

He kissed her nose, like she was a child. Marguerite nearly mentioned the corsage, but that would only embarra.s.s them both. He would pick up flowers on the way.

That night, afraid to climb into Porter's stark king-size bed (it was wide and low, covered with a black quilt, headed by eight pillows in sleek silver sheets) and afraid to use one of the guest rooms, Marguerite pretended to sleep on the silk divan. She had purposefully changed into a peignoir and brushed out her hair, but when Porter came home (at one o'clock? Two?) all he did was look at her and chuckle. He kissed her on the forehead like she was Sleeping Beauty while she feigned deep, peaceful breaths.

In the morning, Marguerite knocked timidly on his bedroom door. (It was cracked open, which she took as a good sign.) He stirred, but before he was fully awake, she slid between the silver sheets, which were as cool and smooth as coins.

I want to stay, she thought, though she didn't dare say it. I want to stay here with you. They made love. Porter was groggy and sour; he smelled like old booze; his skin tasted ashy from cigarettes; it was far from the golden, salty skin of summer. He wasn't the same man. And yet Marguerite loved him. She was grateful that he responded to her, he touched her, he came alive. They made love; it was the same, though he remained quiet until the end, when a noise escaped from the back of his throat. Might she stay? Did he now remember? But when they were through, Porter rose, crossed the room, shut the bathroom door. She heard the shower. He was meeting a student at ten, he said.

For breakfast, he made eggs, shutting the refrigerator door quickly behind him. While Marguerite ate all alone at a dining-room table that sat twenty at least, he disappeared to make a phone call. Corsage Woman? Marguerite was both too nervous to eat the eggs and starving for them; she had skipped dinner the night before. When Porter reappeared, he was smiling.

"I called you a car," he said. "It will be here in twenty minutes."

What became clear during Marguerite's scant twenty-four hours in Manhattan was that she had broken some kind of unspoken rule. She didn't belong in Porter's New York; there was no niche for her, no crack or opening in which she could make herself comfortable. This wounded her. Once she was back on Nantucket, she grew angry. She hacked at the driftwood mantelpiece with her favorite chef's knife, though this effort ended up harming the knife more than the mantel. She had closed the restaurant for the winter; there weren't enough customers to justify keeping it open. Without the restaurant to worry about and with things as they were with Porter, Marguerite ate too much and she drank. She had bad dreams about Corsage Woman, the woman who sat next to Porter at Avery Fisher Hall. He held her hand, maybe; he bought her a white wine at intermission. She was slender; she wore perfume and a hat. There was no way to find out, no one to ask, except perhaps Porter's secretary. Marguerite gave up on Proust and started to read Salinger. An education makes you good company for yourself. Ha! Little had she known when Porter said those words how much time she would be spending alone. She considered taking up with other men-Dusty from the fish store, Damian Vix, her suave and handsome lawyer-but she knew they wouldn't be able to replace Porter. Why this should be so she had no idea. Porter wasn't even handsome. He was too skinny; he was losing his hair; he talked so much he drove people mad. He farted in bed; he used incredibly foul language when he hurt himself; he knew nothing about football like other men did. Many people thought he was gay. (No straight man was that educated about art, about literature, about Paris. No straight man wore pocket handkerchiefs or drank that much champagne or lost at tennis so consistently.) Porter wasn't gay, Marguerite could attest to that, and yet he wasn't a family man. He didn't want children. What kind of man doesn't want children? Marguerite asked herself. But it was no use. Marguerite was a country Porter had conquered; he was her colonist. She was oblivious to everyone but him.

Porter, meanwhile, called her every week; he sent her restaurant reviews from The New York Times; he sent her one hundred daisies on Valentine's Day. His attentions were just enough to sustain her. She would make up her mind to end the relations.h.i.+p, and then he would write her a funny love poem and go to the trouble to have it delivered by telegram. The message was clear: It's going to work this way, Daisy. That was how it went the first winter, the second, the third, and so on. He promised her a trip each spring-to Italy or a return to Paris-but it never worked out. His schedule. The demands on him, he couldn't handle one more thing. Sorry to disappoint you, Daisy. We still have summer.

Yes. What got her through was the promise of summer. The summer would never change; it was the love season. Porter rented the cottage on Polpis Road; he wanted Daisy with him every second she could spare. For years it was the same: nights in the rope bed, roses in the outdoor shower, kisses on the back of the neck as she sauteed mushrooms in clarified b.u.t.ter. The first daylily bloom was always a cause for celebration, a gla.s.s of wine. "Cheers," they said. "I love you."

Porter was private about his family, referring to his parents only when he was reminiscing about his childhood; Marguerite a.s.sumed they were dead. He did on one occasion mention that his father, Dr. Harris, a urological surgeon, had been married twice and had had a second set of children rather late in life, but Porter never referred to any siblings other than his brother Andre in California. Therefore, on the night that Porter walked into Les Parapluies with a young blond woman on his arm, Marguerite thought, It's finally happened. He's thrown me over for another woman.

Marguerite had been in the dining room, lured out of the kitchen by the head waiter, Francesca, who said, "The d.i.c.ksons at Table Seven. They have a present for you."

It was the restaurant's fourth summer. Yes, Marguerite was popular, but the phenomenon of gifts for her as the chef was novel, touching, and always surprising. The regulars had started showing up like the Three Wise Men with all kinds of treasures-scarves knit in Peru from the wool of baby alpacas, bottles of ice wine from Finland, a jar of fiery barbecue sauce from a smoke pit in Memphis. And on this day the d.i.c.ksons at Table Seven had brought Marguerite a tin of saffron from their trip to Thailand. Marguerite was thanking the d.i.c.ksons for the tin-Such a thoughtful gift, too kind; I so appreciate-when Porter and the young woman walked in. Porter had told Marguerite when she left the cottage at five thirty that he'd have a surprise for her at dinner that night. She had been hoping for tickets to Paris. Instead, she faced her nightmare: another woman on his arm, here in her restaurant, tonight, without warning. Marguerite turned away and, lest any of the customers perceive her reaction, rushed back into the kitchen.

How dare he! she thought. And he's late!

Thirty seconds hence, the kitchen door swung open and in walked the happy couple. The woman had to be fifteen years Porter's junior. Contemptible, Marguerite thought, embarra.s.sing for him, for me, for her. But the woman was lovely, exquisite, she was as blond and blue-eyed and tan and wholesome looking as a model in an advertis.e.m.e.nt. She had a face that could sell anything: Limburger cheese, industrial caulking. Marguerite barely managed to tear her eyes away. She searched her prep area for something to do, something to chop, but her kitchen staff had everything under control, as ever.

"Daisy," Porter said. "There's someone I'd like you to meet." He had the trumpet of self-importance in his voice. He'd had a c.o.c.ktail or two, someplace else. Marguerite busied herself selecting the words she would use when she threw him out.

Marguerite summoned enough courage to raise her eyes to the woman.

"My sister, Candace Harris," Porter said. "Candace, this is Marguerite Beale, the woman solely responsible for my happiness and my burgeoning belly."

Sister. Marguerite was an insecure fool. Before she could straighten out her frame of mind, Candace came swooping in. She put her hands on Marguerite's shoulders and kissed her. "I have been dying to meet you. What Porter told me in private is that he thinks you're pure magic."

"Candace is moving to the island," Porter said. "She has a job with the Chamber of Commerce and she's training for a marathon."

"Really?" Marguerite said. The Chamber of Commerce rubbed Marguerite the wrong way. She had paid the members.h.i.+p fee to join just like everybody else, and yet the Chamber was hesitant to recommend the restaurant to tourists; they felt it was too expensive. And Marguerite's heart wasn't that much warmer toward people who engaged in any kind of regular exercise. They eschewed foie gras, filet of beef, duck confit; they tended to ask for sauces without b.u.t.ter or cream. (How many times had she had been forced to explain? A sauce without b.u.t.ter or cream wasn't a sauce.) Exercisers, and especially marathon runners, ate like little birds. And yet despite these two black marks against the woman right away, Marguerite felt something she could only describe as affection for this Candace person. She was relieved, certainly, by the word "sister," but there was something else, too. It was the kiss, Marguerite decided. Candace had kissed her right on the lips, as though they had known each other all their lives.

Marguerite led Candace to the west banquette while Porter stopped to chat with friends. She pulled a chair out for Candace. As she did this, she noticed a subtle s.h.i.+ft in the conversation in the dining room. The decibel level dropped; there was whispering. Marguerite's back burned like the scarlet sh.e.l.l of a lobster from the attention she knew was focused on her and this newcomer. It's his sister! Marguerite was tempted to announce. A half sister, she now deduced, from his father's second marriage. Marguerite slipped onto the red silk of the banquette, where she could keep a stern eye on her customers. She held out the tin of saffron.

"Look," she said. "Look what I've been given." She opened the tin to show Candace the dark red strands, a fortune in her palm, dearer than this much caviar, this many shaved truffles; it was for spices like this that Columbus had set out in his s.h.i.+p. "Each strand is handpicked from the center of a crocus flower that only blooms two weeks of the year." She offered the tin to Candace. "Taste."

Candace dipped her finger into the tin, and Marguerite did likewise. The delicate threads smeared and turned a deep golden-orange. This was how Candace and Marguerite began their first meal together: by licking saffron from their fingertips.

Marguerite wasn't really asleep. She was resting with her eyes closed, but her mind was as alert as a sentry, keeping her memories in order. First this, then that. Don't step out of line. Don't digress, wander down another path; don't try to flutter away as you do when you're asleep. And yet, for a second, the sentry looks away, and Marguerite is set free. She sleeps.

And awakens! It might have been an internal alarm that woke her, one saying, There isn't time for this! The silver! The Herb Farm! The blasted tart! (If you'd wanted to sleep, you should have chosen something easier!) It might have been the sluicing sound of the mail coming through the slot. But what stunned Marguerite out of sleep was a noise, another blasted noise. It was the phone. Really, the phone again?

Marguerite held the summer blanket against her bare, flushed chest. She took a deep breath. She had a funny feeling about the phone ringing this time; she imagined some kind of memory police on the other end. She would be charged with reeking of nostalgia. She thought it might be Dusty, calling to ask her on a date, or perhaps it was someone Dusty had talked to that morning, a faceless name that would bounce around Marguerite's consciousness like a pinball, knocking against surfaces, trying to elicit recognition. We heard you're back among the living. An old customer who wanted to hire her as a personal chef, a reporter from The Inquirer and Mirror seeking a scoop on her Lazarus-like return. Marguerite dared the phone to ring as she b.u.t.toned her blouse. It did. Okay, she thought. Whoever this is must know I'm here.

"h.e.l.lo?" she said.

"Margo?" Pause. "It's Daniel Knox."

Marguerite's insides s.h.i.+fted in an uncomfortable way. Daniel Knox. The memory police indeed. Marguerite tried to decide how surprised she should sound at his voice. He sent a Christmas card every year, and the occasional scrawled note on his office stationery, but not once had he called her. Not once since the funeral. However, the fact of the matter was, Marguerite was not surprised to discover his voice on the other end of the line, not at all. He'd obviously found out Renata was coming to dinner and would try, somehow, to prevent it.

"Margo?"

Right. She had to do a better job on the telephone.

"h.e.l.lo, Dan."

"Are you well, Margo?"

"Indeed. Very well. And you?"

"Physically, I'm fine."

It was a strange thing to say, provocative; he was cuing Marguerite to ask about his emotional well-being, which she would, momentarily, after she stopped to wonder what a "physically fine" Daniel Knox looked like these days. Marguerite didn't keep his picture around, and the snapshots that arrived at Christmas were only of Renata. She imagined him s.h.a.ggy and blond gray, an aging golden retriever. He had always reminded Marguerite of a character from the Bible, with his longish hair and his beard. He looked like an apostle, or a shepherd.

"And otherwise?" Marguerite said.

"Well, I've been dealt quite a blow today."