A Hundred Summers (33 page)

I ask: “Was it the same for you? The first time you did this?”

He stirs, as if he were nearly asleep. “What do you mean?”

“Did you love her?”

“Oh, Lily. Why do you ask me these things? Why do you worry like this?”

“It’s just easier, knowing. Wondering is much worse.”

“Then don’t wonder.”

“I can’t help it. Wouldn’t you?”

Nick’s limbs lie heavy around mine, weighing me deep into the mattress. His hands caress me absently. I think for a moment that he’s not going to answer me, and then he says: “All right. If you must. It was last summer, in Europe with my parents. A hot summer, we were all bored and restless. She was older, divorced, living in Paris, a friend of my mother’s, the old cliché. She seduced me one afternoon; I was flattered and somewhat shocked and more than willing to be seduced. We carried on secretly for a few weeks.”

“Was she beautiful?”

“I suppose so. People thought so.”

“Did you love her?”

He laughs. “No. I was a little infatuated, I suppose, but it was a temporary affliction. We parted in August with no regrets, with my parents none the wiser, at least so far as I know. I went back to college and met you and fell hopelessly in love. Is that enough for you?”

“I suppose she was very experienced.”

“Very.”

I think of tangled expensive sheets and throaty laughs, of liquid afternoon light and Nick’s sun-soaked body undulating atop another woman. I can’t see her face, but I can see her white legs wrapped around him, her long, jeweled hands spread over the blades of his shoulders. She is guiding his movements, teaching him the rhythm of copulation, the way he has just taught me. My eyes squint shut. I force out a laugh and lighten my voice into carelessness. “What a difference, then, making love to someone with no experience at all.”

Without warning, Nick rolls me on my back, stretches my arms high above my head, and kisses me so deeply I gasp for air.

“All the difference in the world, Lilybird. Now go to sleep, and don’t think anymore about other women. There aren’t any. From now on, there’s only you.”

SOMETIME LATER,
I half awaken to Nick’s hands stirring around me, lifting my hair from across my cheek. The window is still dark.

“Nick.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I turn and put my arms around him. “You can wake me anytime.”

Nick kisses me and asks me if I’m tired. I kiss him back and tell him I’m not tired at all, not me.

So Nick makes love to me again, and it’s even better this time, because I know now what lovemaking means, because I’m no longer content to lie back and receive him in innocent submission; because I’m free of every restraint, free to touch Nick and taste Nick and marvel at the seamless intersection of Nick and Lily; free to learn every texture and every dimension of the body that surges with mine.

This time, when Nick returns from the bathroom, pirate-eyed and magnificent, I sit up on my knees and spread out my arms for him. I laugh when he lunges across the sheets and tackles me and blows hungry raspberries into the hollow of my throat. I whisper something shocking in his ear, and he laughs back and rolls me around and tickles me without mercy, and we fall asleep that way, tangled and smiling, in mid-tickle: my hand at his waist, his leg between mine, young and in love and full of hope.

18.

MANHATTAN

Tuesday, September 20, 1938

N
ick took me to a place I didn’t know, somewhere in Greenwich Village, where I had hardly ever ventured. It was dark and discreet, with candles on the tables, with the bare minimum of a languid orchestra in one corner and a space for dancing, though nobody did.

We ordered martinis and drank them without saying anything. What do two people say to each other when dangling consciously above the brink of an adulterous love affair? I certainly didn’t know. I took refuge in the drink, which was flawlessly dry and ice-cold, and I was nibbling on my olive, staring at the table, when Nick spoke up at last.

“We forgot to toast. What should we toast to?”

“Isn’t it bad luck to toast with empty glasses?”

“Then I’ll order more.” He signaled to the waiter and asked for two of the same. “Well, Lily?” he said, when the drinks arrived.

I picked up my glass. “I don’t know. To honesty, I suppose.”

Nick clinked my glass. “To honesty. You’re sure you’re all right?”

“All
right
? Are you kidding? I’m the opposite of all right. Everything’s a mess, isn’t it?” I sipped my drink. “What are we doing here, Nick?”

He put down his glass and covered my hand. “I’m comforting a friend who’s just suffered a shock.”

“Is that what we’re calling it?”

He withdrew his hand and didn’t reply. The waiter brought menus, and I studied mine with great concentration, though the small black letters made no sense at all. When the waiter returned, I heard myself order a cream of asparagus soup and a steak, medium rare, though I could not remember deciding on either. Nick said he would have the same and a bottle of claret, the ’24 Latour if they had it.

I raised my eyebrows. “Still like your claret, do you?”

“That particular wine is my favorite vintage.”

“Nick.”

His hand went back to mine. “You’re shaking, Lily. Don’t shake. I don’t want you to think about anything right now. I want you to enjoy your drink, enjoy your dinner. Don’t worry about anything. It isn’t a sin, having dinner. If it is, it’s on my shoulders.”

“She’s my friend.”

Nick leaned forward and took my other hand. “Listen to me, Lily. Listen closely. Budgie is not your friend, do you understand? She never has been. You owe her nothing. Not your loyalty, not your sympathy.”

“I
know
what she is, Nick. She’s still my friend.”

“Trust me, Lily.”

I took my hands away. “Trust you. Why should I trust you, Nick? You married her. You’re having a baby with her, for goodness’ sake. In April. You’re over the moon about it, remember? That’s what Budgie said.”

Nick took a long drink and lit a cigarette. He offered me one, but I shook my head. He smoked half of it down, knocking ash into the tray between us, before he spoke. “You wanted honesty, Lily. You toasted to honesty. Here’s the honest truth: Budgie may or may not be expecting a baby. God knows she’s used that gambit before. I have no idea if it’s true this time. But I know one thing with perfect certainty: the baby, if there is one, is not mine.”

The candlelight gleamed against the smooth brushed-back hair above his brow. I took his cigarette from the ashtray and smoked it. Nick’s eyes were fixed on mine, stern and sincere. As I opened my mouth to speak, the waiter arrived with the soup, pouring it from a gleaming tureen and into our bowls with solemn ceremony. He added pepper. I finished my martini. The wine came, was uncorked and poured for Nick’s approval. I watched his face in the dim light, and for a moment he seemed so grown-up, so sleek and experienced, while I sat with my frizzy hair and damp clothes and my Seaview hat, the channels of my body opening to flood with gin.

The baby, if there is one, is not mine.

The blood ran lightly through my veins.

“How can you be so certain?” I asked, in a low voice, when the waiter left at last.

“Because I have been to bed with Budgie exactly once, and that was before I married her.”

For some reason, in the shock of this admission, in the dizzying rush of questions and conjectures it let loose, I could only ask: “One night, or one time?”

“One
time
, Lily.” His hand closed around mine, and this time I didn’t pull back. “One time, not ten minutes, ten miserable and decidedly drunken minutes for which I have loathed myself since. I thought I was achieving the ultimate revenge, and instead I came face-to-face with myself, with how pointless and culpable my behavior had been since . . .” He looked down at our hands, clasped together. “I was still in Paris, on the point of moving back to New York, to take over the business. I woke up the next morning with a blistering headache, determined to start anew, to change my life, to stop behaving like a sulky ass.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

With his left hand, Nick picked up his martini glass, finished it off, and turned to his wine. “Lily, let’s not talk about that yet. I’m not nearly drunk enough, and neither are you.”

“No. I’m feeling quite drunk already. I want to know.”

“Eat your dinner, Lily.”

“Nick, I’m not a child.”

He picked up his spoon. “Please eat, Lily. I’m famished.”

He waited expectantly, spoon poised above his soup, until I gave in and began eating, in a show of hunger I didn’t really feel. I couldn’t taste the soup at all, didn’t notice the wine as I drank. “I think you should know something, Nick. Budgie really
is
going to have a baby. I’ve seen her, there’s no question.”

“It’s entirely possible.” Nick threw out the admission of his wife’s infidelity with casual ease, between a mouthful of soup and a mouthful of wine.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that while
I
have been strictly celibate since Paris, my wife has not.”

Strictly celibate.

“Then whose is it? How do you know?”

Nick gave me sharp look. “There may be many contenders, for all I know. I’ve left her to her own devices for much of the summer. But I’d guess the likeliest candidate is Pendleton.”

“Graham?” I dropped my spoon against the bowl with an indiscreet clatter. “But that was years ago!”

“Lily,” he said quietly.

My pulse throbbed in my temples. I reached for my wine.

“I don’t suppose you ever suspected. I was on the brink of telling you at least a dozen times. Then I thought you wouldn’t believe me. I thought it wasn’t my place, that I hadn’t the right to come between you.”

“You would have let me marry him, knowing that?”

“I didn’t know how to tell you.
Oh, by the way, your suitor is stopping by to have his way with my wife in the gazebo most nights, on his way home from your house.
It’s rather difficult to lead up to.”

“How did you know?” I whispered.

“I was taking a walk one night. I didn’t disturb them. If I thought he’d been sleeping with you, too, I would have said something, Lily. I swear I would. I would have punched his lights out for that, for your sake.”

“But not for Budgie’s.”

He shrugged. “I doubt he sought her out. She would have seduced him deliberately.”

“And how did you know I
wasn’t
sleeping with Graham?” I asked, after a pause.

“You can tell when two people are sleeping together, Lily, if you’re paying attention.”

I drained my wineglass. Nick poured me another. The streaky green remains of the asparagus soup pooled in the bowl, not at all appealing.

“So I was the warm-up act,” I said. “A few kisses to get the blood flowing. No wonder he was able to exercise such self-control. He had a willing body waiting for him a few doors down.”

“I’m sorry, Lily.”

“No, you’re not. You were quite happy to have him busy in her bed instead of mine.” I looked at him. “You couldn’t have kept her under control, could you? Couldn’t have told her to keep her legs closed?”

“How, exactly? By keeping her busy in my bed instead?”

“No!” I flashed out. And then, quietly: “No. It tortured me, imagining you two together. I could see it in the way she would cling to you as you danced. Her lipstick on your face. It looked like you were passionate lovers.”

“Budgie is a brilliant actress. One of her more useful talents.”

“You weren’t half bad yourself,” I said bitterly.

“Yes, I was. If you were paying attention. Kiki saw through it without any trouble.”

“Yes, Kiki.” I set the spoon along the edge of the soup plate and finished my wine. “Let’s dance.”

He rose with me and took my hand, and we danced gently next to the orchestra. Another couple joined us, emboldened by our example. Nick’s enormous hand wrapped around mine, dry and warm; the other rested at my waist. He danced a little close, but not too close: a thin film of open air still lay between us. I loved his smell, gin and wine, cigarettes and rain. It surrounded me in Nick, immersed me back in the dewy new sensation of falling in love, of being loved in return.

I leaned my head back to remind myself of Nick’s face, and found that he was looking at me, too.

“Don’t say it,” I said.

“I won’t. I can’t, can I? I’m a married man.”

When we returned to our table, the steak was waiting. We ate quickly, finished the wine between us, started another bottle. Nick lit me a cigarette, lit one for himself. I asked him about Paris, and he told me how beautiful it was, how he would walk through the city on his way to the office and wonder which garret we would have lived in together, which mansard window we would have looked from every morning. He smiled at me when he said this, met my enraptured gaze with that warm crinkle-eyed expression I loved so much, because it was as if he had saved it just for me. The wine floated pleasantly between my ears, Nick’s face floated pleasantly before my eyes.