FROM: kyracrenshaw@mindspring.com
DATE: July 13, 2005, 9:02 A.M.
SUBJECT: Things I can’t believe
I can’t believe you’ve traded in the cushy life of the hotel front desk for the restaurant business. I can’t believe you’re dating your boss. I can’t believe you’re living with my dreamboat Duncan. You should thank me for recommending Nantucket. You should remember me in your will.
TO: kyracrenshaw@mindspring.com
FROM: Ade12177@hotmail.com
DATE: July 13, 2005, 10:35 A.M.
SUBJECT: Thank you
Thank you for recommending Nantucket. I am in a much better place, following my new rules, feeling good about myself. I paid off both Mr. Visa and Ms. MasterCard and I have a positive bank balance. I am in a relationship with a real, live, grown-up man. I sing in the shower.
It is amazing, Kyra, the way that happiness changes a person.
TO: Ade12177@hotmail.com
FROM: kyracrenshaw@mindspring.com
DATE: July 14, 2005, 8:41 A.M.
SUBJECT: the way that happiness changes a person
Is happiness contagious? Can you send me some spores in the mail?
When Fiona returned from Boston, Adrienne studied her for signs of illness, but Fiona had never looked better. One very busy Thursday night, the kitchen was waist-deep in the weeds. The kitchen had so many tickets, there wasn’t enough room for them above the pass. The Subiacos were sweating and cursing and busting their humps to keep up. Fiona slid behind the line to plate soups, sauce pasta, and sauté foie gras while singing “The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow.” Every time Adrienne peeked her head in, she found Fiona in soaring good spirits.
“One plate at a time,” Fiona called out. She even helped Jojo, the youngest Subiaco, load the dishwasher. She was a general in the foxhole with her men, but singing, gleeful. It was strange. Adrienne thought maybe the hospital had given Fiona a personality transplant.
It didn’t take Adrienne long to figure out that Fiona’s improvement in attitude had nothing to do with the hospital or facing her own mortality. It had, very simply, to do with love. Right after first seating, JZ walked in. Shaughnessy was away at camp and he had rented a house on Liberty Street. Today was Day One of a week’s vacation.
Fiona and JZ were inseparable. By Day Three they had established a routine: They did yoga together on the beach in the mornings, and then JZ helped Fiona in the kitchen. One morning Adrienne found him pitting Bing cherries and joking with the Subiacos. (The Subiacos were in a collective good mood because the White Sox had won eleven straight and held first place by a game and a half.) Fiona and JZ escaped from the kitchen by noon with a picnic basket and off they would go in Fiona’s Range Rover to secret, out-of-the-way beaches where no one would ever find them. JZ ate dinner at the bar and spent the hour after second seating in the kitchen-and Adrienne knew that after eating with Thatch, Fiona drove her Range Rover to the house on Liberty Street and spent the night.
Was happiness contagious? By Day Four, it was safe to say that the food at the Bistro had never been better and Adrienne wasn’t sure how to explain that. How did the best get better? It just did. Every single guest raved about the food. Perfectly seasoned, perfectly cooked, the freshest, the creamiest, the most succulent. The best I’ve ever had. Adrienne noticed it, too, at family meaclass="underline" the Asian shrimp noodles, the Croque monsieurs, the steak sandwiches with creamy horseradish sauce and crispy Vidalia onion rings. Are you kidding me? Adrienne thought as she stuffed her face. She thought: JZ, never leave.
On Day Five, Adrienne was working reservations when the private line rang. By this time, Adrienne realized the private line could be anybody: Thatcher (who was at an AA meeting), Cat, Dottie Shore, Harry Henderson, Ernie Otemeyer, Leon Cross, Father Ott.
“Good morning, Blue Bistro,” Adrienne said.
A woman’s voice said, “This is Jamie Zodl. I’m looking for my husband. Have you seen him?”
Adrienne found herself at a loss. “I’m sorry? Your husband?”
“Jasper Zodl. JZ. There’s no need to play games. I know you know who he is and I know he’s there. Or if he’s not there now, he’ll be there at some point and I want to speak to him.”
Adrienne wrote JZ’s name at the top of her reconfirmation sheet. She thought of Shaughnessy at summer camp and all the things that might have gone wrong: sunburn, mosquito bites, sprained ankle, homesickness. “He normally delivers here at ten,” Adrienne said. “But he’s on vacation this week.”
“You can cut the crap,” Jamie said. “I’m not stupid. Have him call me. His wife. At his house. He knows the number.”
“Okay, if I see him-”
Jamie Zodl hung up.
Adrienne passed on the message that evening when JZ came into the bar for dinner. He was wearing a dolphin-blue button-down shirt and his face and forearms were very tan. He and Fiona had rented a Sunfish that afternoon and sailed on Coskata Pond. Adrienne delivered the bad news with his chips and dip.
“Your wife called this morning,” she said.
“Here?”
Adrienne nodded. “She wants you to call her at home.”
“It can’t be important,” he said. “Or she would have called me on my cell. I had it on all day. She probably just called to make a point. To let everyone know she knows I’m here.”
“Okay, well,” Adrienne said. “That was the message.”
Later that night as they lay in bed, Adrienne asked Thatcher what he knew about Jamie Zodl.
“She’s unhappy,” he said. “She’s one of those people who thinks the next thing is going to save her. When I first met her twelve years ago, she was desperate to marry JZ. They used to come into the restaurant all the time. He proposed to her at table twenty.”
“Oh, you’re kidding,” Adrienne said.
“After they got married, Jamie wanted to be pregnant. That didn’t happen right away and they went to Boston for fertility help and it worked, obviously, because they had Shaughnessy. But then Jamie realized how hard it was to be a mother. So to afford a live-in, she and JZ sold their house here and moved to Sandwich. Jamie had an affair with the guy who owned the gym that she joined, and JZ found out. Jamie promised to break it off, they went into counseling for a while, and JZ took a job driving for another company so he wouldn’t have to be gone every day. We didn’t see him here for two whole summers. But then he found out Jamie was back with the guy from the gym and he gave up. Got his old job back and he’s been trying to file for divorce, but Jamie won’t let him. She threatens to take Shaughnessy away and she disappears to her mother’s in Charlottesville, and once she and Shaughnessy flew to London for the weekend. The only way JZ was able to find them was by calling his credit card company. Jamie has run them into mountains of debt on top of it all. Pretty woman, gorgeous, but what a disaster.” Thatcher rubbed his eyes. “JZ used to talk to Fiona about the whole thing. It was strange because Fiona and I and the staff had watched the relationship from the beginning-the courtship, the proposal, the wedding, the child, the breakup, and the next thing I knew Fiona and JZ were in love.”
“When was that?”
“Two years ago.”
“So what do you think will happen, then?”
“What do I think will happen?” Thatcher repeated. He was lying on his back, arms folded over his chest like someone resting in a coffin. “Nothing will happen.”
“What does that mean?”
“JZ won’t leave Jamie. He’s too cowardly.”
“He’s worried about his daughter.”
“That’s what he says.”
“You don’t believe him?”
“JZ is a good guy,” Thatcher said. “But he’s not going to risk anything for Fiona. Leave his wife and lose his daughter for someone who’s going to die?” Thatcher rolled onto his side, away from Adrienne. “That would take a hero. JZ is nobody’s hero.”