Between Husbands and Friends (14 page)

“Whatever you and Max find at a takeout,” Kate shot back, as we ushered Matthew and Margaret upstairs to shower.

Sunday morning the men left early to spend the day sailing alone. Kate and I took the kids to the beach, but about an hour after we got settled, clouds came scudding in, the air turned pearly with mist, and the temperature dropped. We had to lug all our paraphernalia back to the Volvo, back to the house. We showered and changed and walked into town to buy books and little treats. The streets and shops were jammed with families doing the same thing on this cloudy, cool day. We picked up videos. We played numerous games of Candyland. That evening the men came back, smelling of salt and wind and sea, expansively pleased with themselves and invigorated from sailing on a day full of wind. They barely had time to shower and dress before
jumping into the Volvo so that we could drive them to the ferry.

Max put his bag in the car, then sat on the front porch, holding Margaret on his lap, spending a few moments just with her. I ran up to the bedroom to pull on a thick cotton sweater, when I heard Chip and Kate in the hallway.

“Is this the way it’s going to be?” Kate asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you going to spend every weekend sailing and ignore me and Matthew?”

“I didn’t ignore you and Matthew. Didn’t we all go sailing yesterday? And I invited everyone again today.”

“Chip. Your son is five years old. Sailing bores him. All he can do is sit. That boat is too big for him, too dangerous.”

“Look, Kate, I don’t want to miss the ferry. I’ll call you and we can talk about this, okay?”

I couldn’t hear her answer, but her face must have expressed something clearly because all at once Chip’s voice took on a tone of exasperation. “Jesus, Kate, what is it with you? I can’t do anything right these days!”

I held my breath, feeling fascinated and guilty. Should I pop out into the hall now, pretending I hadn’t heard anything, or remain hiding here, where I couldn’t help but overhear even more?

I didn’t have to decide. Without a word Kate stamped down the stairs, and after a moment, Chip followed.

Kate was having an unsettled year. She’d been approached by an Italian designer who wanted to open a shop on Newbury Street and wanted her to work there as a saleswoman. She’d agreed. It was a posh, snobby place, with a doorman out front and a pair of brass-ornamented glass doors that opened only if the saleswoman on the inside pushed an electric button.

I’d visited the shop. Once. The few clothes displayed cost thousands of dollars and the other salespeople were condescending to the point of rudeness.

“How can you work there?” I’d asked Kate later. “How can you stand being around those horrid people?”

“They’re all right, once you get used to them.”

“But what kind of people shop there? Who spends two thousand dollars for some hideous piece of fabric that looks like my grandmother’s rug?”

Kate bristled. “You just don’t understand couturier fashion.”

“Damn right I don’t.”

“Look,” Kate shot back. “Your last article was all about how great the school concert was, and you know that that poor Miller child never got anywhere near the notes he was supposed to play. And Kenny Freeman’s piano solo was just pitiful.”

“What’s your point?”

“That we both deal in illusion. And you have no more right to insult my work than I do to insult yours.”

I opened my mouth, then shut it. Why was I so upset, anyway? Why did I care where Kate worked?

“Kate, I apologize. I think I’m just defensive because you’ve entered a world I don’t feel comfortable in. So it makes me feel like I’m losing you, or that somehow we’re not as close as we have been.”

“Well, that’s just silly,” she snapped, then relented and hugged me. “Oh, Lucy, you know you’ll always be my best friend.”

But her job did signify the difference between us.
I
was thrilled to shop at a sale at Talbot’s.
Kate
bought dresses costing as much as our monthly mortgage. She was on the board of a number of prestigious organizations, and she and Chip had a social life in the winter that was far more glamorous than anything Max and I would even aspire to. Neither Max nor I was particularly interested in money, so it never became an issue. In fact, when Max and I lay in bed, talking about our friends, we always felt more concern than envy for the Cunninghams. I would have found all the socializing and the pretension boring and distasteful, and I knew Chip was always on the edge, trying to keep in favor with the formidable powers that ran his firm and established the hierarchy.

It surprised me, that summer, when Kate expressed
her
concern for
me.

It was a rainy night and the children were watching a video while we sat in the kitchen,
finishing a bottle of red wine.

“Don’t you ever feel resentful,” she asked, “that you have to work for Max? That you have to do what he tells you? That you’re helping him achieve his goals but achieving none of your own?”

I was stunned. “I never think of it that way, Kate. I
like
what I do.”

“But you’ve told me …” She gestured toward Aunt Grace’s living room, with its shelves full of books.

“Oh, Kate, I’ve got the rest of my life to write books. I’m not interested in that sort of stuff now. I’ll tell you what I really would like to do.” Kate leaned close.

I whispered, even though the children couldn’t possibly hear: “I want to have another baby.”

Kate moaned. “I know. I can’t believe it, but so do I.”

We spent the rest of the evening thoroughly discussing it: when would be the best time for Matthew and Margaret to have a sibling, how we would change our houses, our schedules, what baby furniture we had tucked away in our attics, the best babysitters in Sussex, the best pediatricians.

We always got to the heart of things on Nantucket. During the other eleven months we were rushed with our daily lives, and even though we talked several times a day on the phone, it was always about details, emergencies, necessities: town meetings, children’s raincoats, doctor’s appointments, birthday cakes, new shoes. On Nantucket we had the leisure to begin conversations that would last the whole month long.

The next weekend both men were to arrive on Friday night, and to my disappointment, though not surprise, Max called to say he wasn’t coming. Another newspaper crisis. He was impatient and energetic, caught up in the moment, and I smiled to myself even as I assured him we’d miss him. Max was in his element.

“Hey,” I said to Kate, “Max isn’t coming this weekend. Why don’t you let me take Margaret and Matthew to a movie, and you and Chip can have an evening alone together?”

“Sounds good to me,” Kate said.

We’d always been easy with each other about responsibilities, efficiently dividing up the housekeeping tasks, generously taking over the care of the other’s child to give each other time off to shop or simply lie in the hammock and read. If Margaret ran into the house with a splinter in her foot or a skinned knee, she addressed whichever adult was nearer and took comfort and direction from either mother. It was as if we were a family during the month of August, two adults who both happened to be mommies, and the daddies were only visitors, arriving in their strange, heavy, somber work clothes from another world. The daddies didn’t know in which cabinet the Band-Aids were kept, or which store carried the penny candy. They cooked only when they felt the urge, usually if they’d gone off on a charter fishing boat, returning with bluefish. They never cleaned or vacuumed or went to the grocery store. Kate and I did that while they spent time with their children.

Friday night I took the children out for a spaghetti dinner at Vincent’s and to a movie, and then to walk around town listening to the street singers. All this was to give Kate and Chip the entire evening at home, to dine in peace and to spend as much time making as much noise in the bedroom as they desired.

It was almost eleven when we got home. The house was quiet. Kate came out from her bedroom in a long shirt and shorts.

“Daddy’s sleeping,” she told Matthew as she led him to his room. “You can wake him up in the morning.” She shot me a wry look that made it clear they hadn’t had a wildly passionate evening.

Saturday I woke to find a note: Chip and Matthew were off on a bike ride, Kate had taken Margaret into town. The morning was mine. I poured myself a mug of coffee and called Max. He was already at the paper.

“All hell’s breaking loose,” he told me. The high school guidance counselor had been accused of rape by a junior. The town was taking sides. It was possible that the counselor had also falsified some references to colleges. It was a terrible mess. The newspaper’s phones were ringing constantly. We talked about the counselor, the girl’s family, the lawyers, the evidence, the need for great caution in reporting this, and suddenly it was noon and Matthew and Chip and Margaret and Kate were bounding into the room. I told Max good-bye; he’d call on Sunday to
talk to Margaret.

“We ran into each other in town,” Kate said. “We’ve brought lunch.” She spread a variety of sandwiches out on the kitchen table. Something abrupt and edgy in her movements made me look from her to Chip.

“So, what do you think?” Chip asked. He was patiently scraping mayonnaise off a sandwich for Matthew.

I bent over Margaret’s plate, cutting her sandwich into small pieces, thinking, Whatever it is, Chip, if you can’t tell just by the way Kate’s mouth is set that the answer’s no, you’re thicker than I thought.

“Why don’t you take Lucy,” Kate asked through clenched teeth.

“Take me where?” I asked brightly.

“Sailing,” Chip said. “This is a perfect day for a sail. Kate doesn’t want to go. I need someone to crew. Want to come?”

“I—” Actually I had no idea whether I wanted to go or not. First I thought of Matthew, then Kate, then Margaret.

“Go,” Kate said, plonking down into a chair. She lifted her long hair, tied it into a knot, let it all fall down again in a cascade of blond light. “Please. The kids need naps and so do I.” Kate looked at me. “Go.”