The same thing happened at Boardwalk (there was no boardwalk in Barton, but the bar prevailed) and Mainsail: gaggles of women, more dolled up for each other than they ever got for their husbands. Tuesday night in Barton was Ladies’ Night Out, an unofficial designation, and one that Rob had forgotten. It was a world without husbands, a world without men. So much for getting away from females: they were everywhere.
Rob settled finally on The Wharf Rat, the only dive bar in Barton. No wharf nearby, and hopefully no rat, but really you never knew. Outside, under the awning, a few twentysomethings were smoking. Rob was peering through the cigarette haze, trying to get a read on the bar’s dim interior, when a familiar figure came weaving down the street: Deirdre Palmer, wearing an outlandishly brief shirt that showed off her nut-brown, toned shoulders.
She grew closer and closer and finally, recognizing Rob, leaned toward him. “Hey, hey,” she said. “What are you doing out on Ladies’ Night?” There was a strong scent of perfume, and something else too—limes? From the margaritas at Don Pepe’s, probably.
“Nothing,” said Rob. “I mean, I’m just out. I didn’t know it was Ladies’ Night.”
“You going in here?” she said, pointing at the bar. Rob shrugged. “I’ll come too,” said Deirdre. She took his arm and led him inside, toward two adjoining barstools. It was not Ladies’ Night at The Wharf Rat. Deirdre was one of only two females in the place, the other being a fiftysomething biker with a tattooed wrist and a navy bandanna tied to her head, so Deirdre’s appearance garnered significant attention. She took in this fact nonchalantly and said to Rob, “I’ve lived in this town fourteen years, and I’ve never been in this place.”
“Me neither,” said Rob. The bartender leaned toward them, his eyes resting on Deirdre’s shoulders, and Rob said, “Two Buds. Bottles.”
“Bud bottles,” said Deirdre. “Look at you. You speak Townie.”
“I guess I do.”
The bartender slammed the beers down on the bar like a challenge, which Deirdre accepted; she downed a third of hers at once. “So. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I love your mother.”
Rob absorbed this news along with a healthy gulp of his beer. He wasn’t going to let a woman beat him at beer drinking. The Bud was fantastic. It made him feel like he was back in college, that first pour from the keg, the feeling that the night was young and anything could happen: anything. He said, “You do? What am I missing?”
“Oh my God,” said Deirdre. “Love. She’s hilarious, she’s absolutely hilarious. We talked a lot on the Fourth of July and she agreed to help me with the gala.”
“Interesting,” said Rob, taken aback. His mother had earned a lot of adjectives in her life, but hilarious was not a common one.
“All these details she thought of in one conversation—boy oh boy, I have no idea what I’m doing. I have so much to learn.” Deirdre paused and tugged on her top. “She freaking loves Eliza, huh?”
Again Rob was stymied. “She said that?”
Deirdre scratched one of her brown shoulders. “She didn’t have to. It’s obvious, the way she talks about her. She admires her, the way she came from nothing.”
Rob stiffened. “Eliza didn’t come from nothing.” He thought of Charlie’s tiny two-bedroom, the little square of kitchen, the town with the single main street. More than once Eliza had driven him by her high school, a low, unassuming building painted a tired tan color with a single playing field and a chain-link fence separating the whole place from Route One. “She didn’t come from nothing,” he repeated. “She just came from different.”
“Oh, don’t take that the wrong way,” said Deirdre. “You know what I mean. Your mother admires Eliza’s smarts, and her guts. She thinks she’s a great mom.”
“She is a great mom.” To the bartender: “Keep ’em coming.”
“I know,” said Deirdre defensively. “That’s what I told her.”
“She went to two years of medical school! And part of the third!”
“I know she did.”
“And then when Zoe was born early she thought it was because of the stress…so she decided to stop.”
“Rob, I know.”
Why did it feel like they were arguing, when they were saying the same thing?
“It’s called ‘stopping out,’ you know. When you take a break in medical school. Eliza calls it the euphemism of all euphemisms.”
“Got it.”
“She could have gone back. She should have gone back! Eliza would have made an amazing doctor. It’s killing her, that she has these connections that could get her dad into a clinical trial and he doesn’t want anything to do with it.”
“I know,” said Deirdre. “She told me.”
“I mean, what do you do with that? How do you help a guy who doesn’t want to be helped?”
Deirdre coughed and said, “It’s awful.”
“I just wish there was something else I could do—”
Deirdre paused respectfully.
Now that Rob was on this track he was thinking about when Eliza saw a gunshot wound for the first time—the bullet had nicked some poor bastard’s scrotum, and one of the guys on Eliza’s team passed out, had to be treated himself. Not Eliza! She held her ground, applied pressure, got through it, came home high as a kite over it. She was amazing.
Except for what she’d said the day before: that had really wounded him. You just draw the pictures so other people can build what you draw with their hands. She didn’t say the next part, but she easily could have. For men to make with their hands. Real men.
“I can’t believe your mother bought that boat for you,” Deirdre was saying.
“Eliza hates the boat.”
That was unfair. Eliza didn’t hate the boat. She just thought it was ridiculous that anyone spent that amount of money on one item. Whereas Rob thought, What is money for if not to use it for Hinckley-level irrefutable beauty? A Family Affair represented the underlying tension to any of their arguments: a fundamental difference in the way they saw the world.
“That boat is stunning,” said Deirdre. “That boat is perfection. Brock thinks so too. It’s one thing we’ve agreed on lately. About the only thing.” She sighed and rubbed at her forehead. She looked genuinely sad. “Your mother gave you what is probably the best fortieth-birthday present ever given.”
“She did. She really did. But I can’t talk about my mom right now. Thinking about her makes me think about Cabot Lodge, and I’m trying to get my mind off Cabot Lodge.”
“Ohhhh, right. How’s that going?”
“Badly.” Big, big gulp of Bud. “I wouldn’t be surprised if I lose the job.”
Just then his phone, which he had laid on the bar, buzzed, and he glanced at it, in case it was his mother or the girls or Eliza. You just draw the pictures.
“Speak of the devil,” observed Deirdre, looking at the phone too. “Christine Cabot. Should you get it?”
Rob was already feeling the beer—no, he decided, he should not get it. “No way,” he said. His voice sounded blurry. “I’ll call her another time.”