Between Husbands and Friends Page 6

“I guess.”

  “All men do. All women do.”

  “So how do we manage to stay faithful?”

  “Fantasies, I guess. That’s what they say. Use the fantasies. How many men have you slept with?”

  I shifted in my chair. Took a sip of wine. Her question threw me. “Well.” This was a little bit like going too far too fast on a first date. “Probably too many.”

  “I’ve slept with too few.”

  “What’s too few.”

  “Two. My high school boyfriend and Chip.”

  “Too late now.”

  “You think?”

  “You’re married. You have a child. And how would you feel if Chip had an affair?”

  “He doesn’t need to. He’s slept with hundreds of women.”

  “He is handsome.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “Is he a good lover?”

  “Define good lover.”

  “Well … he takes his time. Focuses on you.”

  “That’s bullshit. All that therapeutic stuff. It’s not the thought that counts with me. It’s that electrical zap. Pure body chemistry. And the excitement of the new.”

  “Mommy!” Suddenly Margaret was stumbling toward me, wailing. “Sand in my eyes! Ow!”

  I lifted my daughter into my arms. “Let’s go in the kitchen and wash your eyes out.” Glancing at Kate, I said: “To be continued!”

  Margaret fussed and writhed as I washed out her eyes, then clung to me like a monkey, burrowing her head into my chest. She was tired. She’d had an exciting afternoon.

  “Time to go home,” I told her.

  “No, Mommy, please. Just five more minutes,” Margaret wailed, while Matthew stood with his arms folded, his lower lip stuck out and his face stormy.

  “We’ll come back,” I told my daughter. “And Matthew, we want you to come visit us. Soon.”

  As I was buckling Margaret into her car seat, Kate asked, “Do you still want to do a story on this place for the newspaper?”

  “I’d love to,” I answered honestly.

  “Okay, then. Let’s fix a date.”

  “Could I bring a photographer?”

  “Sure.”

  “Sometime next week?”

  “All right. I want to get the cleaning lady in here first.”

  I laughed. “Yes, really,” I said, “I believe I saw a dust mote on your escritoire.”

  Kate didn’t laugh. “Believe me, if the wives of the lawyers Chip works with spy an unplumped pillow in any public photograph of our home, I’ll hear about it.”

  “God, how awful,” I said.

  “Just part of the joys of being part of Masterbrook, Gillet, and Stearns,” Kate said.

  “Well, you can stop in at our house any time for an antidote,” I told her. I drove away, singing a nonsense song to Margaret.

  July 1998

  Each month has its familiar routines; on the first Monday in July, I’m alone in the peace of my house. I’ve driven the children to Camp Arbor, where Margaret is a counselor and Jeremy is, as Margaret was, a camper, a member of the Birch tribe. Max is at the newspaper. Midnight has eaten and vomited and eaten again, and both he and Cinnamon are asleep in the middle of our queen-size bed after a hard night prowling around outside beneath a July moon. I’m waiting for Stan Cutler, the handsome twenty-five-year-old computer whiz with whom I run a desktop publishing business called Write?/Right. We create newsletters for nonprofit groups, brochures for the local health spa and the local counseling center, advertisements for the Lowenski Farm and Greenhouse, the Little Red Schoolhouse, Amelia’s Catering Service. And now we have the retirement home brochure, and I’m delighted. Max should be, too. In just four years Margaret will be in college; we’ve got to find a way to pay the tuition.

  I often wonder what it would be like to work in a real office, in the company of a large staff, instead of in a converted downstairs bedroom in the midst of the mess of my home. I’d feel more professional, I’m sure, because I wouldn’t have Jeremy’s kindergarten artwork or the family grocery lists mixed in with my business papers. But with a room of my own in the heart of my home, I can wander out to do the laundry while I mull over a project, and I can get to the kitchen as often as I’d like. Most important, I’m here at home if a child gets sick.

  Stan and I are working on a big glossy pamphlet about Sunset Estates, the local retirement home. It’s a challenge to make wizened arthritic old geezers with catheter bags in wheelchairs look and sound as if they’re in the prime of their lives, and in fact we’ve decided not to take that approach, which is, after all, false. Misleading. We’re trying to convince the owners of the home to let us present the facts straight out and clear: This is a facility where your beloved aging relative will be gently lifted and turned by strong and cheerful employees several times a day to prevent bedsores. This place is not a first-class hotel, it is a first-class nursing home. It is clean. The employees are kind. The patient will not recover enough to tango across the dance floor of a cruise ship with a newly discovered passion for life, but he will be attended to each day with such care that he will be in as much comfort as possible.

  “Lucy?” Stan bangs on the door, then enters without waiting for me to answer. Short and slight, with horn-rimmed glasses, a goatee, silver studs in his tongue, lip, and nose, rings in his ears, Stan wouldn’t frighten any little old ladies on a strange street at night. He can’t help it; he projects an aura of preoccupied benevolence. Stan is kind, and also brilliant, and I’ve never been with him when I didn’t have the sense that most of his amazing mental energies were currently engaged somewhere in a sphere I knew nothing about. When he has time, Stan is writing a sci-fi novel. He is always reading one.

  “Sorry I’m late. I was talking a friend through a computer glitch.”

  He’s wearing a paisley shirt and extraordinarily baggy jeans; his entire body could fit in one leg. He treads easily past the laundry baskets which have made it only as far as the downstairs hall, past a doorknob hung with a pink cotton sweater of mine which Margaret tried and rejected on her way out the door. Around a set of Matchbox racing cars Jeremy sent streaking down the hall this morning.

  “Have you had breakfast?” I always know the answer to this question. Stan can scarcely remember that eating is a daily human function necessary to power his brain.

  Stan stops. He considers. “Ummmm.”

  “I’ll get you a bowl of fresh fruit and some muffins.”

  There are two chairs in my study: a swivel typing chair for me and a wooden desk chair which Stan has perched on. I set a tray in front of him, on top of various file folders on the table, then sit down behind my desk.

  “Thanks.” Stan takes a few bites of fruit. “Lucy—”

  “So,” I begin. “I’ve been looking at your photos of Sunset Estates—”

  “Wait.” Stan swallows, clears his throat. “Something else first. You know all this fuss about the Lamb property?”

  “Of course I know all about it.”

  How could I not? It has consumed our town for the past few weeks. When Horace Lamb died a few months ago, he left eighty acres of prime property to the town, which in turn was offered a healthy sum for it by the CDA Development Corporation, who wants to build a 300,000-square-foot office complex there. That plan is opposed by the conservation groups in town, who want the town to sell it to them to be used as a nature sanctuary.

  Max’s editorials on the issue have been in favor of the developers, a rare stance for him. He argues that the construction and maintenance of this complex will provide jobs for the people who really need the work, and will eventually make it possible for more people to live here in Sussex without having to drive for hours into Boston each day. The land is not particularly beautiful; no endangered species live there; part of it is swampy, buggy, a breeding place for mosquitoes. His opinions have caused some of his enemies to become more friendly, and some of his friends to feel betrayed.

  Stan says: “Guess who one o
f the major shareholders in CDA is.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Paul Richardson.”

  This is a blow. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe me.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “It’s not that hard. Let me show you.”

  Stan comes around behind my desk, bends over, taps some keys, accesses the Net, taps some more. His fingers are so long and flexible I almost believe the human body secretly, all through the millennia, has been developing genes to link us with computers. The monitor goes blue, green, yellow and green, as different sites emerge and dissolve. The CDA Corporation is owned by Marco Gilotto, Henry Frick, the GenSen Corp., and Fairfields Co. More tapping and a new display appears on the screen: Fairfields Company is owned by Ann and Paul Richardson and by Eva and Peter Richardson.

  “Fuck,” I say.

  “Right.” He draws his fingers through his goatee, leaving a furrow. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, we need to know. I’m glad you found out. Look, I’d better call Max right now.”

  I dial the paper and chat a few seconds with Melanie, Max’s current secretary. Then Max comes on and I give him the news.

  “Let me talk to Stan.”

  I’m glad to hand the phone to Stan. What will Max do now? He’ll have to review his position. Does he really believe a new office complex will serve the best needs of the Sussex community, or was he lured into this opinion during his weekly phone conversations with Paul? Has Paul told Max that he has a financial interest in seeing the land developed? If he hasn’t, Max is going to feel betrayed, he’s going to be furious. He’s going to feel like all kinds of a fool.

  “The Net,” Stan says.

  What matters most to me right now is not the public property, but the private state of the mind and soul of my husband.

  “Fairfields,” Stan says.

  And if anything could pull the rug out from under him, it is this, that the man whom he has admired above all others, the man who Max thought was his comrade in serving the community, the man whom Max has looked upon as a mentor and model, has been using Max to serve his own financial greed.

  I’d always known Max would be constantly engaged in controversy. That’s the stuff newspapers thrive on. Max loves a good fight.

  “You bet.” Stan hangs up.

  But now Max will blame himself for not doing more homework, for not finding out himself that Paul Richardson is connected with the CDA Corporation. And whether he confronts Paul or not, Max will doubt his alliance with Paul from now on. He’ll have to be less trusting. He’s always known that Paul is manipulative, but I don’t think he suspected ever before that he was one of Paul’s pawns.

  Stan and I work on the brochure for a couple of hours. He’s the graphic artist and I’m the writer, but we’ve gotten pretty good at critiquing each other’s work. We scrutinize photos, go over the copy one more time for redundancies.

  “By George, I think we’ve got it,” I say after a while. “Do you want to run it by Mrs. Mackey?”

  “You do it. She likes you better.”

  “All right.” I look at my calendar. “I’ll call and set up an appointment with her tomorrow. Then I’m giving it all to you, right?” I put my arms behind my head and give my back a good stretch. It’s a little after noon. We drift out of my study. “Want some iced tea?”

  “Sure. So you guys leave for Nantucket August first?”

  “Absolutely. We’ve had our ferry reservations since January.”

  In the kitchen I take down two tall narrow glasses, fill them with ice, take a pitcher from the refrigerator. The ice cracks and snaps as the amber liquid surrounds it.

  “What about the posters for the church fair?”

  “You don’t need me for that.” I hand him a glass. “I’ve got fresh mint in the backyard.”

  We step outside. I’m surprised at how dense the heat is. Stan sits on the back step. I pick some mint, murmuring, “Thank you, Mrs. McIntyre,” rinse the pungent green leaves under the outside faucet, slip them into our glasses, then settle down next to Stan. I’m wearing a T-shirt and shorts and I stretch out my legs in the sun.

  “Aren’t you hot in those jeans?”

  “No. They’re really cool, I mean temperature-wise. Sort of like a protective bell of air.”

  I doubt this. Stan is just less aware of things like heat and cold. And wouldn’t all that metal on his face attract the heat?

  “Has Ciara found a job?”

  “Yeah, out in the Berkshires. She’s threatening to go there.”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless we get engaged or something.” He sounds dismal, a doomed man.

  “Max and I got married at twenty-three.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s all right for some people.”

  “Honestly, Stan! Ciara’s a beautiful, intelligent, wonderful young woman. She’s got a great sense of humor and she adores you.”

  “It just seems like it would be The End.”

  “Well, it would be, of part of your life. But it would be The Beginning of a new phase of life.”

  “I like things the way they are.”

  “Don’t you want children?”

  “God, not yet.” He sips his tea. “I’m having too much fun. I’m just barely an adult.” He sighs. “You probably always wanted kids.”

  “I did. But Max did, too, Stan. It’s not just a woman’s thing. Max loves his kids.”

  “I know he’s a great father. Coaching sports and all that stuff. I just don’t think I could do it. Would want to do it.”

  “Hey, there are all kinds of fathers. You wouldn’t have to coach sports. But you could play awesome computer games with your children.”

  Stan thinks about this. “Maybe so. Kids have faster reflexes than adults.”

  “Think how smart any child of yours and Ciara’s would be,” I say, and then my heart explodes in my chest. It’s like a bomb going off. It knocks against my rib cage so loudly I’m sure Stan can hear it. The blue sky, the hot day, the green grass, Stan’s baggy denims all seem to contract and recede into a kind of halo around me.

  My iced tea lies on the ground, a curling worm of spilled liquid staining the grass a darker green, the ice cubes glittering in the sunlight. My hands push against my chest. I’m trying to squeeze air out, I’m trying to hold my heart in.

  “Lucy?”

  Stan’s face looms up close to mine.

  “Can’t breathe,” I say.

  “I’ll call an ambulance.”

  “No!” I grab his arm. “Just sit here with me.” His arm is pleasantly unfamiliar to my palm, longer and wider than my children’s, narrower than my husband’s, and furry, almost gorillalike.

  “Your hand is freezing,” Stan says.

  “I was holding a glass of iced tea,” I reply reasonably, and my heart slows and the rhythm of my breath becomes more regular. I take my hand from Stan’s arm. “I’m okay now.”

  “What happened?”

  Bending over, I pick up my glass. “I don’t know. I couldn’t catch my breath. Maybe I’m allergic to something. Developing asthma.”

  “You’d better see a doctor.”

  “I probably just need lunch.”

  “It’s not a normal response to stop breathing because you’re hungry,” Stan points out.

  He follows me into the kitchen and leans against the wall, watching me tear lettuce and rinse it. “Want some salad?” I ask. “And I’ve got some great rolls.”

  “You just fed me.”

  “Several hours ago.”

  “Thanks, but I’ve gotta go.”

  I open a can of tuna, then bend over to squeeze the water into the cats’ dishes. Instantly Midnight and Cinnamon race into the room, their tails high, bristling with self-importance. “I’ll call you tomorrow, after I talk to Mrs. Mackey.”

  “Right.” Stan heads off down the front hall, then comes back into the kitchen. “Lucy.”

  “Yes?” I’m shaking a glass jar of
salad dressing.

  “You know Max is going to be okay about this CDA thing, don’t you?”

  I’m surprised, touched, and slightly on guard.

  “Of course I know that. Max deals with knottier problems than this every day. It’s just part of his job.”

  Stan holds up his hands as if in surrender. “Hey. Me friend.”

  “I know that, Stan. And I’m grateful.”

  “It’s just that I think maybe you had an anxiety attack. Outside. On the steps. When you dropped your tea.”

  I hesitate before answering, considering his suggestion. “Maybe.”

  “You can look up information about anxiety attacks on the Net,” Stan says. “They’re not unusual, you know.”

  “You’re sweet,” I tell Stan, which I know is the perfect thing to make him cringe. It reminds him that he’s younger than me, that I’m more capable. I have a husband. I have children. “And I will check into it if it happens again.”

  “Cool.” He turns to go.

  “Stan. Jared Falconer has offered me a job.”

  Stan turns back. “Wow. You going to take it?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve got the summer to decide. I, um, I haven’t told Max yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, you know. I mean, the salary’s absurdly high.”

  “Max seems strong enough to deal with that.”

  “And everything would change.”

  “Everything changes all the time anyway.”

  “Yeah, you’re one to talk.”

  “You’d have to commute.”

  “I know.”

  “I’d have to get a new partner.”

  “I know.” I look at Stan. “What do you think I should do?”

  “Man, I don’t know. You better talk to Max.”

  “You’re right. I will.” And I will, but I don’t know when.

  Summer 1987

  By the time Margaret was three, I felt like a complicated, accomplished adult. Being pulled in two directions by a husband and baby seemed right for the Gemini I was, calling forth from me qualities of competence and ingenuity I’d never known I had. I could rock a baby in one arm and write an obit with the other. I could talk on the phone to the high school superintendent while changing a diaper. I could appear as a sweet, storybook mother when I kissed my little girl good night, then morph into a sex goddess as I walked into my bedroom. I could speak effectively for the environment at a town meeting, then go home to color princess paper dolls on the floor with my daughter. Suddenly I had so many roles to play that I felt like a small-town TV station that just got cable.