Between Husbands and Friends (9 page)

“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.

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.

Yet I was … I won’t say
bored.
I wasn’t bored. But part of me, the girl in me, was not satisfied. Kate was a godsend to me with her sarcasm and trenchant remarks and good honest lust. That we had two children of the same age who actually liked to play with each other seemed like a good omen for the future.

It would be far too much to hope for that our husbands would like each other. I toyed with the idea of inviting the Cunninghams over for a casual dinner; Max could barbecue swordfish, I could serve my mother’s lemon cream pie, Matthew and Margaret could play in the yard. But when I met Chip Cunningham at a cocktail party, I ditched the idea fast. If Kate looked like a model, her husband looked like an effing god. Tall, blond, slim, and handsome, he had the floppy blond hair and narrow patrician face of old Boston money. Just looking at him made me feel short, impoverished, and tongue-tied. He was three years older than I was, too,
over thirty
, which at the time made him seem much more sophisticated and mature.

It didn’t help that he was so reserved. Kate had told me that this characteristic of his drove her crazy; it was the major source of all their arguments.

“I’m so glad to meet you at last. Kate talks about you all the time. Well, she would, wouldn’t she, she’s your wife,” I babbled when we shook hands.

“I’m glad to meet you,” he replied calmly.

“Margaret loves playing with Matthew.”

“Yes, Matthew’s quite smitten with your daughter.”

Max was at the drinks table, getting a vodka tonic for me; I wished I could take a huge
inhibition-loosening gulp of it right now. Kate was talking with Andrea Cobb.

“Kate tells me you’re a lawyer.”

He nodded. His gaze was kind but intense.

“Do you get to do exciting things? Will I see you on television?”

“I’m not that kind of a lawyer.”

I waited for him to expand on this information. He didn’t. He was so unbelievably handsome. As if in defense, my mind sent every lawyer/shark joke I knew spinning through my head.

Desperately I said, “I’ve seen your farm. It’s really beautiful.”

“Yes, we were fortunate to get it.”

He didn’t look bored or contemptuous; in fact, he seemed quite kind. He just was so
quiet.

“Kate tells me you’ll be buying some horses.”

“Probably.”

Max arrived then, and I nearly flung myself upon him in relief. “Max, this is Chip Cunningham, Kate’s husband.”

They shook hands and muttered a few polite things about Matthew and Margaret.

“Your property abuts the Jenkinses’, doesn’t it?” Max asked.

Chip nodded. “Right.”

I watched carefully as I slugged back my drink. I truly hoped these two wouldn’t hate each other. Max was as handsome as Chip, but he was
shorter
, and at the moment it seemed like a liability.

Max said, “I heard that old man Jenkins is getting ready to sell.”

“Really. Do you know how much land he’s got?”

Max wrinkled his brow, considering. “I’m pretty sure it’s over a hundred acres.”

Chip squinted, as if he could see the land lying out before him. “I wonder how it lies. How much of it fronts the road. And you know, I think the stream that runs through our property begins on his land.”

“Have you met the Jenkinses?”

“Just the wife. She brought us a homemade pie when we moved in. Seems very nice. I’ve been so busy at the office that I haven’t had time to be neighborly.”

Max nodded sympathetically. “Abner Jenkins told me I could take a walk through his land sometime. Want to go with me?”

“God, that would be great. I really don’t want to buy any more land, but I would like to see what it’s like, and of course I’m concerned about who buys it. I’d like to see the countryside remain country up there. It would be a crying shame if someone tried to develop it.”

The two men launched into a conversation about development around Sussex. I stood dumbfounded, and utterly infatuated with my husband. He was wonderful. He was irresistible. He could make anyone talk.

I glanced over at Kate, who was listening to Olivia Carlton gab about the church fair. Kate nodded toward our two husbands and gave me a thumbs-up sign. Another miracle had occurred.

That summer was Max’s first year at the paper, and he didn’t want to spend much time away from it, no matter how often I reminded him that he needed a vacation. This was complicated by the fact that Max had an irrational, deep-rooted, powerful fear of flying. He’d been on planes only twice in his life, and each time was such an excruciating experience that he vowed he’d never fly again. Because of this, he had to take the two-and-a-half-hour ferry trip to the island instead of the fifteen-minute flight on the little commuter planes. That, added to the two-hour drive from Sussex, meant over four hours of traveling each way. I couldn’t blame him for not coming every weekend.

So I invited Kate and Matthew to spend a couple of weeks with Margaret and me on Nantucket, in Aunt Grace’s house. She jumped at the chance. Our husbands would try to come down for a week at the end of the month.

On a steamy Monday in August, Kate and I drove down together in my Volvo station wagon. It was just a little over a two-hour ride, but Matthew and Margaret were keyed up, impatient, and whiny. It seemed we stopped every fifteen minutes to use the bathroom. During the ferry ride they were still wired, wanting to race each other around the open decks and up and down the stairs, wanting to pet every dog they saw, wanting to do everything but sit still.

“What were we thinking?” Kate said to me. We decided to divide up, taking the children
to opposite ends of the boat.

Once we got to the island, we still had chores to discharge before we could relax. Kate went off to the grocery store while I made the beds and opened up the house. The children weren’t hungry; they’d filled up on pizza, hot dogs, and pretzels on the ride over. We had a makeshift dinner of cheese and crackers with our blissfully cool vodka tonics while the children played like demented aliens in the backyard, and the alcohol must have warped our thinking because at bedtime, when Margaret and Matthew pleaded to sleep in the same room, we agreed. An hour later, we separated our exhausted and overstimulated children, settled their fretful little bodies in their own bedrooms, staying with them, singing lullabies, until they fell asleep.

It was almost eleven o’clock when we finally collapsed downstairs on Aunt Grace’s deep chintz-covered sofa.

“It can’t be like this all summer,” Kate sighed.

“The first day is always hard.”

“I’ve always dreamed of spending a summer on Nantucket. I never imagined it like this.”

“You weren’t imagining it with a three-year-old.”

“I wonder if I’ll ever feel young and wild and free again.”

“I don’t believe that’s in the job description of motherhood.”

“Well, I can’t stand it. I’m not kidding, Lucy! I can’t stand it!”

I thought a moment, then said, “I think I have an idea.”

Kate and I schlepped our cooler, beach umbrella, beach bags, and two children away from Jetties Beach, over the sand and the narrow boardwalk toward the parking lot. We’d spent almost six hours by the water and everyone was stoned from too much sun. We’d tried to give the children a rest by insisting they lie on the blanket for a while, but they hadn’t slept. They’d amused each other by making fart noises with their mouths. Now they were cranky. We adults weren’t exactly vivacious.

I drove; Kate supervised the kids from the front seat. Matthew didn’t want to wear his seat belt; it pressed on his sunburn.

“Keep it buckled,” Kate insisted.

“Noooo,” Matthew whined, twisting and kicking the back of my seat.

“I’ve got sand in my bum crack!” Margaret wailed.

“Bum crack!” Matthew echoed, then laughed maniacally.

Back at the house, we dumped everything in the front hall then rushed off to our separate bathrooms. Margaret and I stepped into the shower, pulling the glass door shut, enclosing us in a blissfully slick white world, a technological man-made miracle, less dazzling, more snug than the seaside. As the cool water sluiced down over us, we peeled off our sticky swimsuits, exposing skin as shockingly white and ultranaked as worms under rocks. Specks of sand trickled down around our feet. We’d both been wearing bikinis, and now we were as striped as zebras.