Between Husbands and Friends (2 page)

The Cunninghams’ historic brick Georgian mansion rises up like a set for
Masterpiece Theatre.
Max helps Jeremy make the turn past the neat circle drive at the front of the house to park on the white gravel at the side. We spill out of the car. The golden lab, Sugar, waddles out to greet us, her tail wagging.

Chip lopes toward us, a tall blond man wearing only swimming trunks and sneakers. His shoulders are burned, his skin glimmers with sweat. No doubt he’s been working in his vegetable garden, or cutting brush away from his various trails through the woods.

“I just drove!” Jeremy crows.

“I saw you. You did great.”

“Can I ride Princess?”

“Absolutely. Abby’s got her all ready for you.” He takes Jeremy’s hand, turning to tell us, “Kate and Matthew are in the house.”

Max opens the trunk, and we fill our arms with the bowl of rice salad, beach bag, and a carryall holding two bottles of white wine and one of apple juice, which we carry through the back door into the cool kitchen. Kate’s there, barefoot, wearing a black bikini. She’s bending over the long pine table, lost in thought, her face somber, even sorrowful.

“Kate,” I say.

She jumps, startled, and in an instant transforms herself. “You’re here! Hi, guys! Margaret, look what I just made!” She waves her hands like a game show hostess, displaying a rectangular cake turned into an American flag by raspberries, blueberries, and white icing. She’s got icing on her cheek and elbow, but her eyes are pouchy and red-rimmed.

“That’s cool, Aunt Kate,” Margaret says.

“Thought I’d practice for the Fourth of July.”

“What a girl.” I hug her.

“Where’s Matthew?” Margaret asks, looking around. Matthew outgrew the ponies long ago and never took to riding as Abby has.

“Where do you think?”

Already Margaret has gone off into the den, drawn by the sirens’ song of MTV. The Cunninghams and Max and I decided long ago that when our two families get together the kids are permitted to watch all the television they want, but they have to join us at the table for dinner,
when
dinner’s ready, no matter what’s on television then.

“Chip’s been mowing,” Kate tells Max. “I think he wants to take a dip in the pond.”

“I’ll join him,” Max says, and heads out the door.

Through the high windows I see Chip tightening the cinch on Princess, then making a brace of his hands onto which Jeremy eagerly steps. Jeremy climbs onto the pony’s back and grabs the reins. In the sunlight Jeremy’s brown curls take on a paler glint; by the end of the summer his hair will be bleached almost blond.

Abby kicks her pony, and they set off at a trot, Princess at her flank, Jeremy trying to post. Jeremy often has coughing spells after riding. He’s probably allergic to horses, and guiltily I hope he is. I’m always nervous when Jeremy rides. Even a pony is huge, compared to my little boy.

“I put beach towels out on the patio,” Kate calls.

Max joins Chip. The two men walk along the path between grasses and wild daisies to the pond, one tall, blond, and lean, one short, dark, and stocky. A giraffe and a bull. Good friends.

I say, “I think I’ll have a swim, too,” but Kate puts her hand on my arm.

“Wait. I want to talk.”

“Kate, not now.”

“Lucy, please.” Her face flushes and tears well. “Lucy, he’s dying.”

Her grief is so painful. I take Kate in my arms and hold her as if she were my child. “Oh, honey.”

“Chip won’t let me talk about it. He’s so inflexible! And intolerant, and just plain ignorant, too!”

“Chip’s just worried,” I assure Kate. “It’s understandable.” I pull out a chair. We sit facing each other. “Tell me.”

“He’s so thin,” Kate cries. “And his skin—”

For several years Kate has been doing hospice work, visiting a young man named Garrison who has AIDS. Chip fears that Kate will somehow become infected, or will carry the disease home to her children. They’ve had many royal battles over this. Kate insists on sticking with her work with Garrison. Chip retaliates by refusing to listen to one word about the dying man. It doesn’t help that Kate has, if not fallen in love with Garrison, at least come to love him deeply, and not only platonically. To Kate, Garrison is as handsome as a wounded god, brilliantly funny, creative, sympathetic, intuitive. She tells me there is a deeply complicated sensuality in caring for him. She brings him expensive treats: iced mango sorbet, Dom Pérignon and Stilton, chocolates from Switzerland. Each bite he takes is a thrill, an event. She cuts his nails. She combs what hair he has left. She touches him as much and in as many ways as she can, sometimes she even gives him facials. She rubs his back. Often they sit listening to music—Garrison likes opera—holding hands.

“I want to bring Oscar here,” Kate says, weeping. Oscar Wilde is Garrison’s Yorkshire terrier. “I promised Garrison I’d give him a good home. And Oscar knows me, trusts me. He won’t be so bereft. Or we can be bereft together.”

“What does Chip say?”

Kate snorts. “What do you think? He doesn’t want Oscar here. Says one dog is enough. Right, as if we don’t live on a fucking
farm
!” Kate rises, grabs tissues, blows her nose, sits down again. “Chip says Oscar would upset Sugar. Make Sugar jealous. God, Sugar’s so fat and lazy, she needs a younger dog around to get her moving!”

“Sugar’s not the point, Kate. It’s that Oscar is Garrison’s dog, and Chip is jealous of your relationship with Garrison.”

“Yeah, well, he damned well should be!” Kate sobs. “Garrison loves me in a way Chip can’t even understand! Garrison loves me with his soul. Oh, God, how will I live without him?” Grief overwhelms her. Kate bends double, her entire body shaking with sobs. She sinks to her knees on the cool tile floor.

I glance around. Matthew and Margaret are still in the den. Outside the children sit enthroned as their ponies try to munch grass. I can’t see the pond, but the men must be there.

“Kate.” I kneel next to my friend and wrap my arms around her. “Honey. I’m so sorry.”

“If he goes into the hospital, I want to spend as much time with him as possible.”

“Okay. I’ll look after Abby and Matthew.”

Kate shakes her head. “I know. And I want to tell Chip I’m with you.”

“No. Kate, I’m already lying to him.”

Chip hates it when Kate is with Garrison, so for the past six months Kate’s told Chip that she sees Garrison twice a week, during the day, while the children are in school. In fact she’s been visiting him four or five times a week and telling Chip she’s with me. Kate asked me to help her by perpetuating the lie and I have agreed; it is a
good
lie, I believe. It does no one harm, and it helps Garrison and Kate.

I haven’t told Max about this. He hates lies. It’s surprising, how easy it is to pretend to be doing something with large chunks of my day, and my own husband doesn’t know. In a guilty way, I kind of like this. It gives me an illusion of freedom. Still, I don’t like the thought of extending the magnitude of the lie. That would increase the chances of getting caught.

“Every day but Sunday. Lucy, don’t shake your head,
listen
to me. Garrison is dying. He’ll be gone by the end of the summer. He has no one else who can care for him like I do.”

It’s true. Garrison’s lover died of AIDS two years ago. His parents disowned him when he came out to them. He has many friends, but some of them just can’t handle this particular illness, and others are just so busy making a living.

“I thought we could pretend to be taking a course together. At the community center. A summer course, just six weeks. Exercise or basket weaving, it doesn’t matter, Chip won’t want to hear about it. As long as he thinks you and I are together, he’ll be fine.”

“I don’t know, Kate. That’s more complicated.” I’m thinking aloud, trying to find a solution. “I haven’t had to say anything to Max about all this yet, and Chip thinks you’ve been coming to our house. But if we’re supposed to be going out, in public, taking a course … why, think about it, Kate. Other people would have to be in the course, people we all know, who Chip might run into. It just wouldn’t work.”

Kate rises and rinses her face with cold water. “I have to see Garrison every day.”

“You need to tell Chip that. You need to tell him the truth.”

“It will initiate World War Three around here.”

“I know. It will be hard. But it’s the only way. And maybe it will make things better between you and Chip.”

Kate flashes me an angry look. I’ve overstepped an invisible line, insinuating that things between the Cunninghams are less than perfect. Oddly, the more I stand up for Chip, the more it seems to free Kate to complain about him, and the reverse is true; if I criticize Chip in the slightest, Kate jumps to his defense. I can understand this; it’s the way I feel about Max and my children. But it’s easy for me to champion Chip. Very easy.

“Mom?”

Matthew and Margaret stand in the doorway.

Every time I see the boy his bones seem to have grown. His collarbone almost pokes out of the tanned skin of his shoulders. Only a month older than Margaret, Matthew looks much older: Tall already, five feet ten at age fourteen, he will surely be as tall as his father soon. Matthew doesn’t seem comfortable with his early height and the attendant stretch of his long arms and legs; he trips on the untied laces of his sneakers (but still won’t tie them). His blond hair is clean, but too long and badly cut. It hangs over his eyes and around the sharp planes of his face; clearly he’s using it to hide behind. His chin is spotted with acne and the beginnings of a paltry beard. I know his parents have advised him that the oil from his hair will only exacerbate the acne; I’m also sure that he chooses to ignore their advice.

Matthew wears a tattered T-shirt and baggy madras shorts; Margaret wears a faded button-down shirt of her father’s and a pair of her enormous jeans. It’s a good guess that she’s trying to hide her body. Over the past year her breasts have sprouted like tubers, like squash, large and firm, organically incontrovertible evidence that she’s growing up. I know Margaret is now absorbed with the vision of herself as someone quite distinct and separate from her family. She wants to travel, she wants to have boyfriends (she wants to have
lovers
!), she wants all the adventures awaiting her in the wide world.

Although if Margaret has her way, she might find sufficient adventure right here. She must notice that in spite of his shield of hair, Matthew is as drop-dead handsome as his father. Perhaps that’s why she holds her face so poker-straight, as if she’s numb.

“Hi, Biggies,” Kate greets Matthew and Margaret. She’s gotten her face and voice under control. “Want to go up to the pond?”

Margaret shrugs.

Matthew says, “Sure.”

“I made a gallon thermos full of iced tea and one of lemonade. Could you carry them, Matthew?” Kate is all business now, assigning tasks, handing me the basket of fruit, Margaret the bag of chips. “Dad already set the lawn chairs out.”

We head out the door, our arms full.

We walk along a freshly cut path toward the pond, through a stand of evergreens long ago planted as a wind block. Abby and Jeremy sit on their horses in the shade of a huge maple at the far end of the pasture. The sun beams steadily down without a single cloud to block its strength.

When they bought the farm, Chip had several loads of sand delivered and dumped at one end of the pond to form a beach, and it’s here that he’s set up the beach chairs. He and Max are on the other side of the pond, working on the dock that extends into the water. One of the rubber inner tubes that supports it has come loose and they are refastening it.

Kate sinks onto a towel and begins applying suntan lotion. I peel off my jeans and shirt, sink down next to her, and do the same. Matthew walks over to the men and talks a moment, then drags his T-shirt over his head, tosses it aside, runs out onto the dock, and belly flops into the water.

Margaret spreads her towel out and sits next to me. I bite my lips to keep from asking, “Aren’t you hot?” After a while, with a little moue of resignation, as if she’s being forced against her will, she unbuttons her shirt and steps out of her jeans. She’s wearing a one-piece bathing suit, and her figure is so slim and nubile that tears come to my eyes. She is lovely. She is what men have been writing poems about for centuries. Her hips are narrow, her thighs long and sleek. My beauty. She is a jewel. When I tell her this, she retorts, “Yeah, Mom, just what I want, compliments from a middle-aged woman.”

She wades into the water, dipping her palms to catch water up and splash it on her shoulders.

Kate leans close to me. “Look at her,” she whispers. “She’s beautiful. Man, Lucy, she’s really blossomed over the winter!”

Margaret takes a deep breath and strikes out in a long easy crawl for the middle of the pond. Matthew sees her, grabs a silly alligator-shaped float that the Littlies love, and heads her way. They collide in the middle of the pond and surface and splash and shriek, suddenly transformed back into the childhood buddies they’ve been for eleven years.

Kate lies back and closes her eyes. I join her. The sun soothes me, makes me drowsy, hypnotizes me. This could be any summer day here or on a Nantucket beach, when our families are together. Good fortune, normal life.