Eddie laughed and turned around. He held out his hand and Skip declined to take it, so Eddie went up without him. After a minute or two Skip caught his breath and came up.
“Where did you go?” Polly asked.
“Westport!” Eddie said. “A pretty town to see from the sea.”
“Made all the better for not needing to find a parking space,” Skip said.
Polly agreed. “There is no parking in Westport.”
It was clear, at least to us, that brunch at the Hotallings’ had at last reached its conclusion. “Well,” Jonathan said, looking at his watch, “it’s time my bride and I headed back to Bronxville.”
“Drop me at the train station, will you?” Eddie asked.
I said we’d be happy to.
“You can’t go now,” Polly said to Eddie, her franticness resurfacing for the moment. “Spend the night! Or at least stay for dinner. We can watch a movie. Did you see all the food we have?”
Eddie shook his head. “There’s work to be done, manuscripts waiting in line for the red pencil.”
“But it’sSaturday,” Polly said, a fact she’d no doubt called out to the men in her life for as long as she’d had men in her life. Later she would say it to her children, and then to their children: It’sSaturday.Stay with me.
I was still undecided as to whether I disliked her intensely or felt terribly sorry for her.
“No one’s going to die if you don’t get chapter fifteen straightened up this weekend,” Skip said.
“Did I ever once, in all the years you were working, tell you to put either the merger or the acquisition aside so that we could go out on the boat?”
But Eddie had missed what Skip was saying: Skip wanted him to stay. If belittling Eddie’s job was the only way he knew to ask, still, he was asking. One imagined time passed slowly in Darien.
Skip waved Eddie away with his hand. “Let them go,” he said to Polly. He still had his sunglasses on.
Polly declared that in order to leave we would have to takea portion of the leftovers with us: leftovers as exit tax. Then she disappeared to the kitchen, returning ten minutes later with plastic containers full of food arranged in two giant bags from Palmer’s Market. “Eat it,” she said sharply. “I don’t want everything going to waste.”
We said our goodbyes. I put the bags in the backseat beside me and told Eddie to get in the front. We looked like we had robbed a specialty food store and were making our getaway.
Eddie clipped his sunglasses back onto his glasses. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” he said as we pulled down the driveway, his head falling back against the headrest. He continued to wave and Polly continued to wave even though Skip had gone inside. “I never would have gotten out on my own. Her will is too strong. Take a left down here.”
“We’re not going to the station,” Jonathan said. “We’ll drive you home.”
Eddie shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
I told him we were ridiculous people.
The Yankees were playing, and so we set out on 95 South towards 287 West to avoid the traffic. Jonathan, who had promised Polly he would say nothing, recounted our afternoon down to the stain on her sleeve.
“Skip took me out on the Chris-Craft so she could ask you about my health?” He stared out the window, taking in the passing mansions for a while before pushing ahead. “That’swhy we had to go to Connecticut?”
“That was our impression,” I said. “I don’t think she meant to welcome me back into the family.”
“I don’t even remember how long I’ve had leukemia. Eight years maybe? It’s not exactly breaking news. My doctor stumbledonto it doing the annual blood work. ‘Your cholesterol looks good, Mr. Triplett, but we need to run some more tests to see if you have leukemia.’ Which I did. It sounded so terrible at first. When I got back to the office, I called Skip—that was poor judgment on my part. Skip told Polly, Skip and Polly looped in every expert they could think of, and all the experts said I was fine, given the circumstances. I’m fine. I can’t imagine they’re still thinking about it.”
“They’re very attached to you,” I offered from the backseat. We hold these truths to be self-evident.
“Anyone would think that Polly’s the one you’ve been seeing on the side all these years,” Jonathan said.
“That’s what my mother thought!” I said.
Eddie turned to look at me. “Your mother thought I was seeing Polly?”
