Agnes had assured him this wouldn’t happen. But as she snarfed down her delicious eggs, she realized that he had a right to be concerned. She had been home for less than twenty-four hours and was already being a slovenly pig. The thing was, it felt good.
Dabney said, “Honey, I would have made you breakfast.”
“I’m a grown woman, Mom,” Agnes said. “Do you want me to make you a piece of toast? I hogged everything else.”
“I’m happy to see you eating,” Dabney said. “You’re too thin.”
“You’re too thin.” Her mother’s clothes were hanging off her, and her cheekbones were jutting out. “Daddy says you’re not feeling well.”
“Wheat allergy, I think,” Dabney said.
“You and everyone else in the world,” Agnes said. “So I guess no toast for you.”
Dabney said, “I’m headed into the office. There’s a Business After Hours tonight at the Brotherhood, so I’ll be home late, after dinner. You’ll fend for yourself?”
“Of course,” Agnes said.
Dabney smiled, then kissed Agnes’s forehead. “I love you, darling. I’m so happy you’re here.”
Agnes had moved right back into her childhood bedroom, which her mother had redone as a guest room. There was an all-white king bed with navy accent pillows, and luscious, buttery pine furniture. The room was filled with light, and it was situated all by itself at the east end of the house. Agnes wasn’t sure what CJ found so objectionable about it.
Agnes missed CJ terribly-but at the same time, not at all. She could eat freely when she was away from him, and she could breathe freely. CJ was so perfect, so beautiful to look at, so confident in his manner, so successful in his business, and so absurdly generous, that Agnes wondered what exactly he saw in her. Agnes was young and pretty and she was a devoted do-gooder, but she had seen photographs of CJ’s ex-wife, Annabelle (Agnes had googled her, and had creeped her on Facebook and Twitter). Annabelle was as gorgeous as a model, her hair and makeup always perfect. She had sat on charitable boards and chaired events; she had been an actual socialite, with socialite friends who had apartments comprised of entire floors in Park Avenue prewar buildings, whereas Agnes lived in a one-bedroom walk-up on West Eighty-Fourth Street. CJ had lived on Park Avenue as well, but he had lost his apartment in the divorce, and then Annabelle had sold it and bought a waterfront property in Boca Raton, where she served on charitable boards, chaired events, and lived off CJ’s money.
Freeloader, he called her. Good for nothing. She doesn’t realize the value of money because she never had to earn it.
Aside from this, CJ didn’t say much about Annabelle or about why the marriage had failed, even though Agnes had repeatedly asked. CJ said that both he and Annabelle had signed a paper agreeing never to discuss the particulars of their split. A gag order. This had sounded reasonable at the time, but after what Agnes had heard from Manny Partida a few weeks earlier, Agnes wasn’t so sure. She thought spending the summer away from CJ might be the best thing.
Manny Partida was Agnes’s boss, the regional director, the head of every Boys & Girls Club in New York City. He was the one who had come in to tell Agnes that National wouldn’t be funding any summer programs for her club that year. Agnes was devastated; she had more than six hundred members, and what exactly were those kids supposed to do all summer without any programming? Agnes loved the kids at her club in direct proportion to how little they had. Her favorite children, ten-year-old twins named Quincy and Dahlia, were homeless; they lived with their mother in a shelter, but not always the same shelter. They each brought a rolling suitcase to the club, which Agnes kept safe in her office so that no one would pilfer their things. Dahlia liked to make fairy houses out of twigs and grass and sometimes even old straws and McDonald’s cups that she found on the perimeter of the club’s crumbling asphalt basketball court. Agnes could have cried just thinking about the two of them without a safe place to go all summer.
As if this weren’t upsetting enough, Manny had another bomb to drop.
He said, “A little bird told me you’re engaged to Charlie Pippin?”
“CJ,” Agnes said. “Yes, I am.” She looked down at her left hand, though her fingers were bare. The diamond CJ had given her was too valuable to wear safely to work.
“When I knew him, which wasn’t that long ago,” Manny said, “he went by Charlie.”
“You knew him?” Agnes said.
“He was a big donor, one of the biggest, at the Madison Square Club, ten, twelve years ago,” Manny said. “He and his first wife.”
Agnes nodded. On one hand, she didn’t want to hear about CJ and Annabelle, and on the other hand, she craved every detail.
Manny said, “I realize people change.”
Agnes smiled uncertainly. “Excuse me?”
“People change,” Manny said. “He changed his name, and he switched affiliations to the Morningside Heights Club, which is good because you can certainly use the money. But I’d advise you to be careful.”
“Careful?” Agnes said.
“Rumor has it he wasn’t very nice to his first wife.”
“Wasn’t nice?” Agnes said.
Manny held up his palms. He wore a light blue T-shirt under a khaki suit and a three-inch silver cross on a chain around his neck.
“I’m not saying he hit her, because I don’t know the specifics. But there were stories flying around for a while. Something happened at one of the benefits for the Madison Square Club. They had both been drinking, the wife had bid on something quite expensive without asking his permission, he lost his temper, and I heard…” Here, Manny trailed off. “This is just what I heard, Agnes, and so take it with a grain of salt. But I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t tell you. I heard he got physical with her.”
“What?”
“Hair pulling, arm twisting, some not-so-nice stuff.” Manny stood up. “But again, that was ten, twelve years ago, and people change. Just please, Agnes, please be careful. You’re one of the best directors I have, and I only want to see you happy.”
Manny Partida had left the office, and Agnes had sat glued to her chair for a long while, thinking that Manny Partida was full of shit, or whomever was feeding his ear was; the people at the Madison Square Club were probably mad or jealous that CJ had moved his financial allegiance uptown, and that he had brought Victor Cruz in to sign autographs! Lorna Mapleton, who was the director at Madison Square, was in her sixties; she thought Agnes was too young to be at the helm of a club. Physical? Agnes couldn’t imagine CJ being physical with her. It was true he had a temper, especially when he was drinking, and Agnes had heard him slice people to ribbons over the phone. But he was always gentle with Agnes, he cared about her well-being, that was why he liked her to exercise every spare moment and why he watched her diet-no carbs, no cheese, no sauces. Her body was his temple, he said. He would never hurt her.
Agnes hadn’t told Dabney what Manny Partida said-God, no, that would have sent Dabney into a tailspin-but Agnes had decided on the spot that she would spend the summer at home on Nantucket.
That first afternoon, Agnes walked into town. She wasn’t a town person the way Dabney was. Dabney loved town. For her, the allure of Nantucket was found on the grid of four square blocks. This was where the action was-the real estate agents, the insurance agents, the pharmacy with lunch counter, the art galleries and florists and antiques stores, the churches, the post office, the administration buildings, the clothing boutiques, the T-shirt shops. Town was where the people were. Dabney loved people, and anyone found on the streets of Nantucket, if only for an hour or two on a day trip, she thought of as “her people.”