Page 22 of The Castaways
“Nothing,” they said together, and Delilah was grateful. She had concocted the whole notion of taking Chloe and Finn without consulting Jeffrey. She was a horrible wife. And she was drunker than she thought.
ADDISON
Addison’s memory, in regard to Tess, went back only as far as the first time he had kissed her. December 27, in Stowe, Vermont.
He wasn’t sure if he could go back and think about it. Well, wait, maybe, give him a minute. It was sort of like asking him if he could go down and touch his toes now that his femur was broken. But then it occurred to him that all he had left of Tess were these memories, and since no one knew about their relationship, there was no one in the world to talk to about it other than himself. It had crossed his mind to make a truly mind-blowing announcement at Jeffrey and Delilah’s house following the reception. Why not just confess? Make a scene? But Addison loathed scenes. Even now, when he thought about Phoebe shrieking in the parking lot of the Galley, he closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. Never mind the way she’d shattered like a teacup on September 11. Addison decided not to come out with the truth for many reasons—and really, his distaste for scenes was at the bottom of the list. First of all, he didn’t want to hurt Phoebe. Second, he loved his friends, and he wanted to keep them. And somewhere in there was another niggling reason: he feared that if he told everyone that he and Tess had fallen in love, no one would believe him.
Why? Because Tess was married to Greg, who had muscles chiseled out of mahogany, a voice that fell somewhere between Frank Sinatra and John Mayer, eyes that made even Florabel, the receptionist in Addison’s office, who was a lesbian, tremble with nerves and excitement so that she almost spilled her coffee every time Greg walked in. Why whywhywould Tess turn around and have an affair with Addison, who was bald and bespectacled, and who could not even get his own wife to kiss him with tongue?
No one would believe it. They would laugh.
In your dreams!
But it had happened. It was real.
They had all gone to Stowe on the day after Christmas, for what was their sixth (and final) group vacation. Adults only, five days of ski and apres-ski. Addison had gotten hold of the 4BR condo for free in the usual way, which was to say that a man who had bought a five-million-dollar piece of land on Pocomo Point from Addison in the fall had offered the condo to Addison as a thank-you for doing the deal.
Addison said,Oh, really, Jack, it was nothing.
Jack said,Take the condo. Week after Christmas, it’s yours. Wife and I are going to St. Barts.
The group vacations were always fun. They were always thebest(though in Addison’s mind the best of the best had been Vegas, and every trip since had been an earnest attempt to live up to Vegas). This trip to Stowe was especially handicapped because of what had transpired between Tess and Greg. The whole mess with April Peck had been murderous. Addison had heard only Greg’s side of the story: Tess would not forgive him. She would act like she’d forgiven him and then either something would happen (she’d bump into someone at the grocery store who would want to vent their feelings on the topic) or nothing would happen—out of the blue, she would just flip out. She would make Greg tell her the whole storyagain,she would get angryagain,she would declare that she could never trust himagain. She wanted him to quit his job, she wanted to move away, she wanted to move out.
Still, they had agreed to the trip to Stowe; they asked Cassidy Montero, on Christmas break from her freshman year at Dartmouth, to baby-sit. Greg was gung-ho about the skiing in a way that made Addison nervous. Addison, despite his many other talents and accomplishments, did not ski. He liked the atmosphere of skiing—the fire-warmed lodge, the view of a snowy mountainside, the clean air, the drinks—but not the sport itself. Addison suspected that Greg’s opinion of his own prowess was inflated—this was generally the case—but at any rate, Greg’s enthusiasm fueled a sense of great expectation for the trip.
So there they were, the eight of them, in colorful Gore-Tex parkas and snow pants, with probably a hundred zippered pockets among them. The Chief and Andrea had their own skis and boots, as did Greg, as did Jeffrey and Delilah. Phoebe had brought her ice skates and her cross-country skis and boots, all carefully preserved relics from her high school years in Wisconsin.
The condo was located two hundred yards from the parking lot of the mountain. It had two stone fireplaces, four sumptuous bedrooms, each with its own marble bath, a gourmet kitchen that Jack the Client had, as a surprise, stocked with Swiss Miss and marshmallows, fondue cheese, exotic salamis, olives, white wine, champagne, and a handle of spiced rum. A deck with an eight-person hot tub overlooked the face of the mountain; from the deck, Addison could pick out tiny figures whooshing down the trails. The furnishings were “luxe lodge”—suede sofas and deep armchairs, a coffee table fashioned from a tree trunk. There were two flat-screen TVs and a sound system with speakers throughout the house.
It was impossible to walk into that condo and feel like anyone except the luckiest person alive. If the fluffy duvet sheathed in English flannel on your bed wasn’t enough, if the deep shearling throw rugs under your feet weren’t enough (it was as if there were fur coats strewn across the floor), then step out onto the deck, where the hot tub was steaming like a cauldron, take a hot buttered rum from the tray Delilah was passing around, help yourself to a cracker topped with goat cheese and hot pepper jelly and look at the mountain while snow fell gently onto the shoulders of your Spyder ski jacket.
“Are you happy?” Addison had asked Tess. He had asked her randomly, because she happened to be standing next to him.
“Deliriously,” she had said.
Had it started there? Not quite. But Addison had been affected by that answer. Something had bloomed under his layers of goosedown, Gore-Tex, cashmere, and 100 percent cotton. He had, via the unexpected perks of his profession, been able to make Tess, who had been sad and anxiety-ridden for months,deliriously happy. What had bloomed in Addison’s chest was not love, but self-congratulation. It was a start.
In the morning, everyone drank coffee, munched toast, grabbed bananas or stored them in one of their many zippered pockets for later. Off to the mountain! The ski car—the Chief’s Yukon—was leaving.
Phoebe would take the other car, her and Addison’s Range Rover, up to the Trapp Family Lodge, where she would cross-country ski, get lunch, and have a massage. Phoebe had a little duffel packed with all her stuff, she had her boots hanging over her shoulder by the laces, and her hair was done in two braids, just like the Swiss Miss.
“Okay!” she said. “See you later!”
She looked fine, normal, happy—a woman out to relive the winter sports experiences of her youth and then indulge in the pleasures she had discovered as an adult. Addison would have been fooled had it not been for the tinny quality that her voice took on when she was medicated, as opposed to the pure, melodic silver of her actual voice, though Addison heard that sterling quality so rarely anymore that he wondered if he would even recognize it.
When he checked in the trash of their bathroom, he saw that she’d taken two Percocets (prescribed to her “for pain”) as well as her Ativan—and he knew she had secret stashes of oxycontin, valium, and Ambien with her at all times. But he wasn’t going to waste time hunting them down. He hoped she didn’t fall through a hole in the ice or get lost in the woods.
That left Addison in the condo… with Tess. He hadn’t realized it, but Tess did not end up going along with the others. She didn’t ski, though Greg had spent much of their four-hour, wine-soaked fondue dinner the night before trying to convince her to take a private lesson. Tess had been reluctant, but Greg seemed to have persuaded her in the end. And yet when Addison closed the door behind Phoebe (he stayed at the sidelight until Phoebe pulled away, wondering if it was wise even to let her drive in the snow, much less ski) and returned to the kitchen to his coffee and theWall Street Journal,there was Tess at the table, wearing a heather gray Nordic sweater and black leggings and socks, assiduously punching numbers into her cell phone again and again.
“There’s no reception here,” she said.
“Who are you trying to call?”
“The kids. The baby-sitter.” Tess smiled, then flushed, embarrassed. “I know they’re fine, but…”
“You’re a good mother,” Addison said. “And good mothers worry.”
She set the phone down on the kitchen table and looked at him. Really looked at him with her wide blue eyes. It took him by surprise.
