Page 25 of The Castaways
Addison let that comment hang for a second. Were they going to talk about it?
But at that second the baby-sitter answered, and Tess said, “Cassidy? Hi, it’s Tess! How is everything?”
She was visibly lighter when she got off the phone. “It’s snowing at home! Cassidy is taking them to sled at Dead Horse Valley, and then home to have hot chocolate and change into dry clothes. Then she’s taking them for dinner and a movie at the Starlight. They’ll be in bed at eight-thirty, which is very late, but what the heck, it’s vacation!” She grinned at Addison. She was wearing a red cashmere hat, and the curled ends of her dark hair poked out beneath it. She was lovely. Addison was overcome with the desire to kiss her. Kiss Tess MacAvoy! He was sure he would be struck by lightning or the railing he was leaning on (indeed, depending on for support—after the treadmill and three miles of walking, his legs were shot) would give way, dumping him into the icy river.
“What do you want to do now?” he asked.
“Lunch!” she said.
It was, they agreed afterward, the lunch of a lifetime. They went to a small French cafe called Nous Deux (We Two) that had a blackboard menu and banquettes that used to be church pews and were now upholstered in bright Provencal fabrics. The woman who seated them was the owner, Sandrine, a Quebecoise, Addison discovered, as he and Sandrine chatted for a moment in French. Sandrine was visibly delighted by Addison’s French. He asked for a table in the corner. He and Tess each slid onto a pew and Sandrine left them with the menus and the wine list.
Tess said, “You speak French so beautifully.”
“Six strict years with Madame Vergenot and two and a half years in Paris working for Coldwell. Would you like wine?”
“Wine?” she said, as if he were suggesting an all-night rave at an underground club on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. He remembered suddenly that this wasTess,who during the course of a normal week drank milk at lunch, out of one of the small cartons they gave the kids. But then she said, “Sure. Why not?” with a wicked little grin on her face.
So, really,really really,it had started then, with Tess’s renegade decision to throw caution to the wind and drink wine at lunch with Addison. Addison ordered the most expensive bottle on the menu, a Mersault he positively adored but that one could rarely find on a wine list. Ordering this wine and then praising Sandrine for the fine selections on her list incurred even more favor with this woman than speaking French had. She loved Addison and Tess! She brought them the wine, she poured it lavishly. Then she whisked away their menus and said to Addison, “Allow me.”
A succession of marvels came out of the kitchen—duck confit on a gaufrette, endive stuffed with aged chevre and a balsamic fig, a platter of petits croque-monsieurs, an asparagus salad topped with a quivering poached egg. Tiny ramekins of the most decadent onion soup gratinee Addison had ever tasted. Sandrine, Quebecoise goddess, treated Addison and Tess not like husband and wife but like lovers. She set plates down, she gave a sly smile or a wink, she disappeared.
Tess, defying all precedent, was an accomplished student of such debauchery. She not only drank the wine, she savored it the way it was meant to be savored—mouthful by mouthful, over the tongue, eyes fluttering. (Addison could not help drawing a comparison. Phoebe drank wine the way she took pills: she threw it back with purpose rather than joy, then waited for the numbness to take effect.) Tess ate her food in tiny, delicate tastes. She had a child’s hands; he had always been aware of this, but what he hadn’t realized was how deft her hands were. Addison fumbled with his food (he was nervous, despite the loosening effect of the Mersault), but Tess cut little bites and popped them into her mouth quickly and neatly.
During all this time—the wine being savored (Addison bravely ordered a second bottle), the courses devoured, Sandrine appearing, then disappearing—Tess was talking. She talked about the problems she’d had getting pregnant—the two miscarriages, the baby lost at twenty-one weeks. Then she talked about the twins. She loved the twins too much, maybe, and this was what had caused her problems with Greg.
Again Addison held his breath. Were they going to talk about it? Sandrine popped the cork on the second bottle of Mersault and Tess reached for her glass and drank. And then she started to talk about It, that Sunday Night, April Peck, What April Said, What Greg Said, Holes in April’s Story, Holes in Greg’s Story. How Tess Knew Greg Was Lying. How She Begged Him to Tell the Truth, How He Stupidly Stuck by the Asinine Lies He Concocted.
Addison nodded; he tried to mirror Tess’s own listening techniques. He did not defend Greg’s side of the story. Instead, it felt like he had been looking through the wrong end of a kaleidoscope. Only now, when hearing the story from Tess, did it all make sense.
“We’ve been married eleven and a half years,” Tess said. “Andrea tells me not to let one measly night ruin so many years of hard work and devotion. But what Andrea doesn’t understand is that the ‘one measly night’ was representative of so many underlying problems in our marriage. The fact that I can’t get the truth. Greg won’t come clean! What Andrea doesn’t understand is that the hard work and devotion have been one-sided. Me giving to him.” She carefully constructed a masterpiece bite out of farmhouse bread, Roquefort, apricot preserves, and a candied pecan. Sandrine had just dropped off a cheese plate worthy of Auguste Renoir. Tess eyed the morsel thoughtfully, then looked at Addison. She had tears in her eyes.
Oh no!he thought. She was going to cry!
“I want to leave him,” she said.
“And go where?” Addison said.
Tears dripped down her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “Paris?”
It had started there. They did not need the petites tartes Tatin with Calvados ice cream that Sandrine sent out, nor did they need the chocolate truffles or the slender flutes of rose champagne. (“Billecart-Salmon,” Sandrine said. “Un cadeau.” A gift.) But they enjoyed them anyway.
Addison paid the bill with five one-hundred-dollar bills, which made Tess gasp even louder than she had at the gym when she thought he was in cardiac arrest. He whisked her out of there, stopping only to kiss Sandrine on both cheeks and say, “Le dejeuner de ma vie.”
He and Tess were holding hands as they left the restaurant. Nous Deux.We Two.That morning at eight o’clock, Tess MacAvoy had been Phoebe’s friend and, more saliently for Addison, Greg’s wife. She had been a secondary or tertiary theme in the symphony of Addison’s life; she had been a figure in the background.
Now, however, she was his.
They stood under the awning at the back door of the cafe, facing a small parking area where there was only one car, an ancient silver Peugeot—most likely Sandrine’s. Addison bent down and kissed Tess—and yes, it did occur to him that he’d consumed an entire bottle of wine, followed by a glass of champagne. He was drunk and so was she. The kiss could fail. It could be like kissing his little sister. But their lips connected and there was a spark, an electric charge, a surge of attraction. The kiss was the right thing. He kissed her again. And again. And again, and then they were kissing in the back parking lot of Nous Deux. Tess’s arms locked around him. He pulled her in. She was his now. Did she know this?
So that there was no mistaking what all this meant, he said, “I may have just fallen in love with you. Okay?”
And she said, “Okay.”
Addison was crying now. Of course he was crying. The silly, sad tears of a little boy, though he had no recollection of feeling like this as a child. This feeling was adult. There were so many things he could never bring himself to do again: he would never go to Stowe, he would never order that bottle of Mersault, he would never eat a croque-monsieur. He would never kiss anyone for the first time.
He had Tess’s iPhone, pilfered from the Coast Guard’s bag of her personal effects. He felt guilty for stealing it. But then, guess what? The Chief called to inform him that he was the executor of the MacAvoy wills.
“What?” Addison said. And because his memories of Tess started this past December, it took a while to come back to him.
