The Winner, page 16
“Would you like another oyster, miss?” Charlie was holding one up for her.
“Thank you.” Emily went over to receive it. “You want another?” she asked Conor.
“No,” he said.
“It’s no problem at all,” said Charlie. “Allow me to prepare it for you, sir.”
Conor was sure he was smirking under his mask. As Charlie shucked more oysters and Emily ate hers, she and Conor were forced to wait in the uncomfortable silence of being served.
“You from Cutters, miss?” Charlie asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“And how about you, sir?”
“No,” Conor said.
“Just coming to the party with your girlfriend?”
Other than Charlie’s generally being an asshole or incorrectly thinking he was unmasking Conor for having cheated on his girlfriend with Georgia, Conor couldn’t believe he would try to make him sweat like this. Charlie had much more at stake; the revelation of their connection would leave only him, a cater-waiter who couldn’t afford a lawyer, open to criminal charges for burglary and vandalism.
“Working here for the summer,” Conor said.
Charlie set an oyster on the ice and picked up a lemon wedge and a bowl of cocktail sauce. “Lemon or cocktail sauce, sir?”
“No, thanks.” Conor grabbed the oyster and stepped out of earshot before Charlie could say anything else. After he downed his oyster, he continued looking for Catherine.
“Want to get some chocolate cake with me?” Emily asked.
“No.”
“You sure? It looks really good.”
“I don’t like chocolate cake.”
“Chaw-colate,” she repeated with a smile.
“What?”
“You say ‘chaw-colate.’ Like the way you say ‘caw-fee.’ It’s your Yonkers accent.”
“I don’t have a Yonkers accent,” he said.
“It’s cute. I’m not making fun of it.”
“You’re the one who says tum-ah-to.” He didn’t deliver this observation with teasing affection.
“It’s how I was taught to say it,” she said softly. “I know it’s embarrassing. I don’t say it when I’m around . . . other people.”
Catherine finally came into view, entering from John’s main driveway.
“We should go,” Conor said. “Separately.”
“We could just separate without leaving the party,” Emily said. “I want to get some cake.”
Catherine was looking in their direction from afar as she joined the party.
“Fine, you stay,” he said. “I have to do more prep for this interview.”
“Should I come over later?”
“Text me first. And wait till you hear back from me.” He made a show of shaking her hand. “Nice to meet you,” he said loudly.
Emily walked off. Conor waited until she was lost in the crowd before returning to the raw bar. He dropped the empty oyster shell onto the ice.
“I know it was you,” he said in a low voice to Charlie.
“What was me?”
“Don’t fuck with me. You’re lucky I didn’t say anything.”
“I got no clue what you’re talking about, bro,” Charlie said.
His denial was unpersuasive. “You come back here and pull another stunt, I won’t be so lenient,” Conor said before he left for his cabin.
“Enjoy your summer, sir,” Charlie cheerfully called to his back. “I’ll tell Georgia you said hi.”
HE KEPT AN EYE ON THE PARTY THROUGH HIS CABIN WINDOW, RELIEVED to see Emily didn’t talk with either her mother or Charlie. When it petered out and he was certain Catherine was gone, he texted Emily that she could come over so long as no one would see. Once she arrived, he reset his phone to airplane mode.
“Olivia and I made plans to go to this island tomorrow,” she said, naming a place he had no idea how to spell. “Want to come and meet her? We’re gonna have a picnic and walk around, and we’ll be outside the whole time.”
He had Sundays off, and he could use a change of scenery. “Sure,” he said. “Sounds fun.”
She lay down on the bed, removed her glasses, and rubbed her eyes. Still frazzled from nearly getting caught by Catherine, he did some dishes he’d left in the sink.
“I haven’t been there since I was a kid,” she said. “There’s a ten o’clock ferry, so we have to leave here by nine, and we’ll have dinner there and get back by about eight. You’ve got a check on the floor.”
“I’ve got to check what on the floor?”
“You have got a check,” she enunciated. “It’s on the floor.”
A check was facedown on the floor near the bedside table. Catherine must have put it on the table after he’d left, it had blown off from the breeze, and he hadn’t noticed it earlier. Emily stretched over from the mattress to retrieve it.
“I got it,” he said, walking fast to beat her to it, but he didn’t get there in time. She held it up for him, and he snatched it out of her hand.
“Wait—did I read that right?” she asked.
She’d seen her mother’s name on it. He had to come up with a fast excuse.
“What?”
“Was it for three hundred bucks? I thought your lessons cost one-fifty.”
She had thick glasses and could barely see without them. Incredibly, she hadn’t read the check beyond the dollar amount.
“They are,” he said, stuffing the check in his pocket. “Suzanne Estabrook paid me for two at a time, since she sometimes forgets her checkbook.”
“Oh.” She stroked his leg from the bed. “It sort of turned me on, to be honest. Isn’t that fucked-up? That I write about how money has made my family miserable, but when I see your paycheck, I have this visceral arousal?”
“It’s fine,” he said.
She pulled him by his belt loops down to her on the bed.
“I’m still viscerally aroused,” she said.
They kissed while she massaged him over his fly, then unbuttoned it. In the midst of his own growing excitement—maybe this was what their moribund sex life needed, for him to become the breadwinner, or, to gratify his own depravity, for him to nearly get busted—he realized he hadn’t washed himself since being inside her mother ninety minutes earlier. Emily was on birth control, and they’d stopped using condoms after the first couple of weeks.
“I’m dirty,” he said, pushing her hand away.
“I know you are.”
He got off the bed. “Seriously, I haven’t showered yet today, and I played tennis. I should at least wash down there. It probably doesn’t smell great.”
“I like when you’re sweaty from tennis. You smell like a red-blooded man who does real work.” She leaned her head close to his crotch and inhaled deeply, her nose near both her mother’s scent and pocketed check.
“I’m gonna wash up,” he told her, jerking away.
“Don’t take too long,” she said.
He cleaned himself thoroughly at the bathroom sink, scrubbing off Catherine’s musky smell and whatever fluids she’d left behind. The thought of what had nearly just happened nauseated him, though the ultimate object of revulsion was himself. He deserved to get caught. Maybe, on some level, he wanted to get caught, so he wouldn’t have to make the decision himself and could end the suspense.
As he urinated, he took his phone off airplane mode. He had four texts and three voice mails from Catherine. The texts, sent in succession half an hour earlier, all said, Lesson. He played the voice mails quietly.
“Pick up your phone,” went the first. “Answer me,” she said on the second. And the last, delivered just ten minutes ago: “If you won’t pick up, I’m coming over.”
He’d made it the whole summer without this catastrophic occurrence, and not only was it now happening, but Emily was probably already stripped naked on his bed.
Just got texts, he wrote back. Bad reception. I have food poisoning. I can give you lesson tomorrow if better.
The text didn’t go through despite his repeated attempts. He really did have bad reception.
She’d be there in five minutes. He had no choice but to phone her. He ran the shower and placed the call. After stalling, it went through and she answered.
“Where the fuck have you been?” she asked. The ocean roared dully in the background.
“I’m sick,” he said quietly. “Maybe from the raw bar. I’ve been throwing up for almost an hour.”
“Oh.” She continued breathing heavily from the exertion of walking. “Well, I can bring you medicine.”
“No, I’ve got some. And it’s not just vomiting. I’ve been having . . . gastrointestinal issues.” His mother had once told him that malingerers who showed up at her office often professed to have diarrhea, because it was impossible for the doctor to confirm and embarrassing enough that few people would make it up. “I’ll be fine, but I don’t want anyone around when I’m like this.”
It sounded like she’d stopped walking. “Fine. Come over tomorrow afternoon, if you’re better. My daughter’ll be gone all day.”
“Okay,” he said. “I have to go—I’m feeling sick.”
He turned his phone back to airplane and jumped in the shower. He’d averted disaster but had been far too careless; he shouldn’t have been with both women on the same night, especially not after Catherine might have seen him with Emily at the party.
He came out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist. Emily was under the covers, not wearing anything on top. “Who was that?” she asked.
“Who was what?”
“On the phone. I heard you talking.”
“Oh—my mom. She needed help with a disability form.” He turned his back and toweled off. “I forgot I have a lesson at noon tomorrow with someone from Tanners,” he said. “So I don’t think I can go to the island.”
“Can’t you reschedule?”
“The guy said he’s leaving Monday.”
“Can you just cancel it?”
“I’ve never canceled a lesson in my life.”
“I’ll pay you the hundred and fifty bucks,” she said. “It’s nothing.”
He waited a moment. “That you think you can just throw money at me and make me do what you want, it makes me feel like I’m your . . .”
“I’m sorry,” said Emily.
As much as he was milking his reaction for effect, the part of him that took pride in earning every cent through hard work was genuinely offended by the cavalier ease with which she assumed that she, just like her mother, could control him with her rentier’s money—and also that she considered a hundred and fifty dollars, a figure that would always seem meaningful to him, “nothing.”
“I really am sorry.” She put on a kittenish voice. “Connie boy, come into bed. Please?”
He knew he should be grateful that she was in the mood, if only as a peacemaking tactic, but instead he returned to the sink to clean the rest of the dishes, his back to her. Neither of them spoke as he scraped egg off a frying pan with steel wool.
“Sometimes”—she took a while to finish the sentence—“sometimes I feel like you’re not really present. Like even when you’re holding me in bed, your mind’s elsewhere. If we weren’t isolated here and I wasn’t spending nearly every night with you, I’d almost wonder if you were seeing someone else.”
He didn’t answer.
“My dad’s like that,” she went on. “I’d spend these long weekends with him as a kid, and he’d barely talk to me.”
Conor rinsed the pan with scalding water and dried it without speaking.
“It was obvious he didn’t really want me around.”
At that, Conor walked over and hugged her. “I’m here. I’m not your dad.”
“You should give your lesson tomorrow,” she said when they unclenched. “You know I really admire how hard you work. That’s the root of me being turned on by it. How self-sufficient you are. Not the actual money you make.”
He nodded.
“You aren’t seeing someone else, right?” she asked. “You don’t have a girlfriend back home or anything?”
“I am,” he said. “Suzanne Estabrook. That’s why she pays me so much.”
She let out a conciliatory giggle. “Who’s the guy from Tanners? I might know him.”
“Uh . . . James or John something. I don’t remember his last na—me,” Conor said, the stammer brief enough that Emily didn’t notice it.
THE NEXT DAY, AFTER CONFIRMING HE’D RECOVERED, CATHERINE TEXTED Conor to come at five o’clock, well before he knew Emily was due back. Unafraid of encountering her, he biked down the main road, a much-faster trip than walking the shoreline path, hid his bicycle near the end of the neck, made sure no one was nearby, sauntered up to the front door, and rang the bell.
“Conor!”
Emily was coming out of her cottage. He froze at the door.
“My phone was dead,” she said as she approached. “I was about to text you.”
“What’re you doing here?”
“What’re you doing here? Why are you ringing my mom’s bell?”
Catherine opened the door.
“Hi, again,” Conor said to her. Without skipping a beat, he spoke to Emily: “I had a lesson from Tanners that never showed up. I was waiting on the court for him when your mother walked by, so I gave her the lesson instead. I came by for the check.”
Catherine looked at them both.
“Why are you home so early?” she asked her daughter.
“The ferry’s on a pandemic schedule,” Emily said. “We didn’t realize till we were there. We got the last one back of the day.”
“You two know each other?” Catherine said.
“We met at John’s party,” Conor said. “It’s . . . Emily, right?”
She nodded stiffly.
“I’ll get your check,” said Catherine. Before she ducked into the house, she stopped. “Why don’t you two join me for a cocktail on the patio?”
Conor didn’t answer, assuming her daughter would rebuff her for them both.
“I could go for a drink,” Emily said.
“Conor?” Catherine asked.
Turning down the invitation might make either woman suspicious—or, worse, in his absence, Emily might heedlessly reveal their relationship. “Okay,” he said.
“See you there,” Catherine said and closed the door.
He was an idiot for trying to shave off a few minutes. If only he’d taken the shoreline path, this wouldn’t be happening.
Conor started off for the patio then stopped. “Where is it?”
“Keep going, all the way around the garage,” Emily said. “So, is my mom good?”
“What?”
“Is she any good at tennis? She’s always bragging about how she was the best on her high school team.”
“She was . . . on the tennis team?”
“Yeah, a few colleges even wanted her to play. She was on the swim and badminton teams, too. In between all her debutante cotillion bullshit. She tried to teach me when I was a kid, and I hated it. No offense. I’ve been trying to figure out how to break it to you.”
“She wasn’t bad,” he said.
Catherine joined them in a few minutes on the patio with a tray of gin and tonics. If Conor had been told, that night he’d first seen this $26 million house, that before the summer was through he’d be an honored guest there, sitting next to the daughter of the owner, to whom he’d professed his love and vice versa, as they enjoyed the clink of ice cubes in gin balloons—that he would now be on familiar footing with the term gin balloons—amid the honeyed warmth of the afternoon sun and the ambient pounding of ocean surf, he would have thought he’d hit the jackpot.
This, however, was like driving on an icy mountain road.
“I’m sorry, Emily,” she said. “I don’t have any beer in the house.”
“This is fine.”
“Conor,” said Catherine, “I’ve been trying to tell Emily that men don’t find girls who drink beer attractive. What do you think?”
“I . . . don’t really care either way,” he said.
“It’s just so . . . lumbering.” Dropping her voice to the oafish register of the most recent Supreme Court appointee, she added, “I like beer.”
Conor studied his ice cubes.
“Emily’s a writer,” Catherine said. “Or she writes, that is. Do you tell people you’re a writer?”
“I say I’m working on a book, if they ask.”
“There was a literary agent who wanted to work with her,” Catherine told Conor. “Emily turned her down.”
“I didn’t ‘turn her down,’ and she didn’t want to work with me yet. You put your friend from Williams—and me—in an extremely awkward position by emailing us at the same time without warning and suggesting we work together, and purely out of politeness she said she’d be happy to read my work, and I said it wasn’t ready yet. And I’m certainly not going to send it to her when it is ready, either.”
“I was just trying to help,” Catherine said. “You don’t have to act like I’ve done you a disservice by offering a connection.”
“For once in my life, I’d like to make it completely on my own. Maybe you can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t want to unfairly benefit from nepotism.”
Conor had always felt uncomfortable around friends when they bickered with their parents, and never more so than now.
Catherine scrutinized her daughter’s face.
“What?” Emily asked, touching it.
“You have a blemish.”
“I’m aware, thank you.”
“I’ll give you some concealer.”
“You know I don’t wear makeup.”
“You really should make an exception for this,” Catherine said. “It’s quite unsightly.”
Emily pasted on a sarcastic smile. “So glad to be sharing this precious time with you, Mom.”
“Well, I’m sorry,” her mother said, as if she were the one who should be offended. “I’m just trying to help. A little makeup goes a long way. And you should stop smoking. It’s horrid for your skin. You’re very beautiful, but you make absolutely no effort. Don’t you think she’s beautiful, Conor?”
He avoided looking at either of them. “Of course.”
“But wouldn’t she be even more beautiful if she made the slightest attempt?”
