The Cousins (23 page)

28

I
T WAS NOT UNTIL
the next day that Olivia had second thoughts. And then they came moving in on her serenity, changing it to the feeling of being off balance, in danger. Part of her felt warm and loved, desired by two men, but another part of her wished none of it had happened. So this was what an extramarital affair was like—having to switch gears so quickly, having to pretend, being on the edge of disaster. No wonder Roger had avoided her when he was having sex with Wendy. He couldn’t play-act the way she could. But what she had felt for both Roger and Marc had been genuine. She knew she could never look at Roger in exactly the same way again, because she had seen—no,
understood
how easily she could hurt him, the same way he had hurt her.

Snow fell, another winter blizzard, the thick, fat flakes pressing against their windows like fog. And it was cold. Wozzle and Buster went out to do their business and came back in quickly, refusing to play in what was out there, shaking the snow off their coats and making puddles on the floor. Clients who did not have emergencies canceled their appointments. It was good that it was an easy day because her mind was still on herself.

Marc called her at the office. “I guess I can’t throw out my Christmas tree today,” he said.

“Oh. You could try.” She smiled, picturing him in his apartment calling her.

“I’m thinking about last night,” he said. “It was wonderful.”

“Yes, it was.” Suddenly the phone seemed dangerous. “But be careful,” she said softly. She did not mean about the Christmas tree, and he knew it.

“Of course,” he said.

“I’m sorry if I sound strange.”

“No, I understand.”

“Such a snowy day.”

“Nice to stay at home and write,” he said. “And you don’t even have to go out to get to work either.”

“We’re lucky.”

“When can I see you?”

“Next week,” she said. It seemed far away, it seemed too close.

“Call me,” he said.

“I will.”

“Soon, sooner, soonest,” he whispered, and she felt him inside her again.

“Yes. I promise.” When she hung up her heart was pounding too hard, but she didn’t know whether it was from anticipation or fear.

In the afternoon, driven by restlessness and confusion, when she had no more patients to see and the sky was still light, she bundled up and went out into the falling snow. In an instant she was covered with it, even her eyelashes. The flakes stung and melted on her tongue. The dirty piles on the sidewalk from the last snowstorm were white again, temporarily. A single taxi groaned through the ice, trying not to fishtail. She was alone on the street and she liked it. She walked to Central Park.

The few blocks seemed endless against the wind, her boots sliding. She didn’t know why she was going to the park, but it was somewhere open and empty, somewhere to go. The harshness of the weather calmed her. She needed to think.

She was not a woman who had affairs, and yet that was what she had just done. Last night’s triumphant bliss had given way to today’s questions. She had thought having an affair would make her feel guilty, but she had never anticipated the rest of it. She wanted them both, she wished they would both disappear. People do this all the time, she thought. What’s so hard about it? But now she understood.

She was the only person in Central Park, and indeed it seemed as if she was the only person in the city who was out of doors. The flakes swirled in the white sky, and piled onto the branches of the trees until they bent. She had snow epaulets, an ice hat. Across the park the outlines of the tall apartment houses were gray and fuzzy. The blizzard was rough but also surprisingly serene. She stood there letting it hit her, letting all the images in her mind empty out.

All I ever wanted was an uncomplicated life, Olivia thought.

Then she realized her feet were cold and wet, and so was her coat, and she started to shiver. She could walk to Marc’s apartment and surprise him; he would be so happy. Or she could go home, light a fire in her own fireplace and ask Roger to rub her frozen feet in his warm, capable hands. I can make love with either of them, she thought, pleased with her power. But I can’t make love with both. Someone else could—I can’t.

She turned away, bent against the wind, and walked slowly home.

* * *

When she got back Roger had already lighted the fire and had made tea. “Where were you?” he asked, in that same mild way he always did. She had never before realized how often they had to account to each other. It had made her feel safe, and then threatened, and now it would just be a part of their lives again.

“Playing in the snow,” she said, and laughed.

“You’re crazy,” he said, chuckling, and when she joined him on the couch in front of the fire and poked him with her bare toe he warmed her feet without even being asked.

She thought how good it was to be back to her senses, but she knew it was not that easy. Marc would not turn ugly to look at just because she wanted to be free of her attraction to him. And although men she had cared about had disappeared often from her life with no explanation, she felt she owed him more than that. They were friends. He was her client. And she hoped they would stay that way.

She called Marc two days later because she couldn’t wait any longer to clear her conscience and, if she was going to upset him, get it over with. “When can we meet?” he asked, and his eager, intimate voice made her feel both sad and a little trapped. I don’t belong to him no matter how close we were that night, she thought; but how could he know that, and besides, when had he ever said she did?

The blizzard was over, paths had been cleared, Roger would be at the gym as usual. “Tomorrow afternoon,” she said.

“My apartment?”

“No, I think we should meet at that bar on your street.”

“Okay.” Did his tone sound a little questioning, or was that her imagination?

As soon as she slid into the booth where Marc was waiting, he leaned forward to kiss her hello, and she moved away. He looked surprised, but then the waiter was hovering over them and Marc took her reluctance to be because of the waiter. They ordered their usual. As soon as the waiter left, Marc took her hand. He looked happy, and that hurt.

“I missed you,” he said.

She looked at his mouth, and her lips throbbed. She forced the feeling to subside. Then she pretended his touch meant nothing to her, and after a few moments it was—surprisingly—easier to deal with, almost brotherly. She had not known her will was so strong, or perhaps it was her fear. When he tried again to kiss her she briefly let him and turned her head.

“We need to have a discussion,” she said.

“That sounds ominous.”

“I thought about you a lot,” she said. That was certainly true.

“What did you think?”

“You’re so attractive and bright and so nice, I’m really drawn to you and I like you so much, but . . .”

“But?”

She sighed. “I’m not able to handle this.”

“What happened?” He looked very concerned. “Did he find out?”

You always call him
he
, she thought. “No,” she said.

“Then what can’t you handle? Tell me, I’ll help.”

“Us. I just can’t cheat on Roger. I never did this to him before, and now I realize why. I’m not good at it.”

“You’re wonderful at it,” he said softly.

“Not really.” She was the one playing with his fingers now, but in a bemused way, as if he were her sweet child. Then she took her hand away. “I
have
thought a great deal about this, Marc. I think we shouldn’t see each other for a while.”

“How long is a while?”

“Until we can be friends again.”

“We were always friends,” he said. “I thought we were.”

“I mean just friends.”

“Oh.” His voice was flat, but she could see how hard he was trying to hide his disappointment. It pained her to look into his eyes. He’s young, she told herself; he’ll get over it. Sooner than I think, I’m sure. “That’s what you want?”

“Yes. Please try to understand.”

The waiter brought Marc’s beer and her Perrier and left. “Well,” Marc said.

“Well.”

They looked at each other. They sipped their drinks. This time he did not ask her what she was thinking “right this minute,” because she was sure he didn’t want to know.

“I guess I’ll go away again for a month or two and concentrate on writing my book,” he said finally. “Someplace warm. I have a friend whose parents have a house on Anguilla they hardly ever use. I’ve always had an open invitation, maybe I’ll go there.”

“I’m not telling you to leave town!”

“Nothing to keep me here, and it’s been a hard winter. I’d be glad for the sun.”

“That sounds nice,” she said gently. “This
has
been a hard winter.”

“Do you want me to send you a postcard?” Echoes . . . no, just a connection.

“Of course,” she said. “As long as it’s boring.”

“They always are, aren’t they?” he said, and smiled.

“Not to me,” she said, and smiled back. “Never to me. Even as friends.”

She left him earlier than usual because there wasn’t anything more to say—and there was too much. And she didn’t want to risk arriving home after Roger again and having to lie. Marc put her into a cab. He kissed her lightly on both cheeks in the French way, as he had the first time they had drinks together. They both noticed.

In this one bittersweet gesture the ending was the same as the beginning, but of course it wasn’t at all.

29

S
PRING WENT BY
, and then a blastingly hot summer was full upon them. In the spring the cousins had met twice on happy occasions—the bar mitzvahs of Jenny’s son, Max, and Melissa’s son, Abe—and caught up on family news. Jenny’s Didi, who was now eleven, was doing extremely well with her singing lessons and was determined to become a Broadway star. She had already won a local children’s beauty pageant, which she entered herself with no help from her parents, and now she was looking for an agent in the Yellow Pages. Jenny and Paul intended to stand off and let her pursue her career by herself, but they were thrilled and a little surprised at what had blossomed in their midst.

“You know how at beauty pageants they ask all the contestants the same question,” Jenny told Olivia. “The question is: ‘Who would you go to for advice?’ She said: ‘My mother.’ And then she went on and on about how I was her best friend and how she admired me so much. The woman sitting next to me was saying: ‘Oh, you must be so proud,’ and I was just sitting there laughing because Didi tells me seventeen times a day how much she hates me.”

Taylor was hugely pregnant and happily obsessed with the coming event. She who had always been afraid to have a child now believed that motherhood was going to be the pinnacle of her existence. She seemed annoyed but not worried about the specter of Big Earl as Grandma. Somehow the guilt and fear that had allowed her to put up with Earlene’s unwelcome visits had been pushed aside by her view of herself as an adult responsible for a tiny, vulnerable life. It was clear she knew who the mother was going to be in this new story, and it was not Earlene.

Nick’s agency had mounted a fresh advertising campaign to update Julia’s image, a concept he had decided upon with Charlie the Perfect’s son, Tony. Suddenly the venerable old institution was going to be trendy.

“I suppose even Julia’s has to keep up with the modern world,” Aunt Myra told Olivia with a trace of regret in her voice. It seemed to be working; they had higher dividend checks this year.

Tony didn’t come to family functions after the time they had seen him, just as Charlie had not. He devoted himself to his own family life and to the business, although unlike his late father, he used commercial airliners on his trips for the company. This was due less to a fear that something might happen to him than because certain family shareholders had complained about the expense of a private plane. It was the first time anyone had dared to criticize anything.

It was more than the store that had come into the modern world.

* * *

In August Olivia and Roger decided to spend ten days in Nantucket, something they had never done before. Somehow the memories of Paris lingered in a way that did not make either of them anxious to go back so soon. They stayed at an inn, read, walked, ate and made love. It was very romantic, although they agreed afterward that their next trip would again be to a foreign city, perhaps in Italy.

She hadn’t seen Marc again, but he had sent her several picture postcards with innocuous inscriptions. The first was from Anguilla, the next two from New York—from bars where they had met, which was not so innocuous—and the last one from Paris.
My grandmother’s birthday again
, he wrote.
So much changes, so much remains the same
. She was not sure what he meant by that.

At first she had thought about him often—every day. Sometimes it was just a flash of memory, sometimes a brief daydream. She didn’t allow herself to think about him with sexual longing, but with nostalgia and with fondness. What had been so intensely physical had diluted through her wish for peace into a recollection that was mild and, in a way, much sweeter than it had been when it was actually happening. And then, finally, there were days when she didn’t think about him at all. She felt relieved about that, although she knew he would be a part of her life for a very long time.

In August, when Olivia and Roger were in Nantucket, Taylor gave birth to a healthy baby boy, whom she and Tim named Cody. Aunt Myra called on their return with the good news.

“Tim told me Taylor thinks the baby looks just like Grady,” Aunt Myra said.

Olivia sent the baby a sterling silver teething ring with an imitation ivory elephant on it, from a catalogue that shared the proceeds with the campaign to save endangered wildlife. He would be getting things from Julia’s soon enough. A month later a little card with a blue ribbon on it arrived, announcing Cody’s birth, along with a note from Taylor and a photograph of the baby himself. He did look a little like Grady, which was nice.

Dear Olivia, Thank you for Cody’s beautiful teething ring. He loves it. I can’t wait for you to see him. He is exactly like Grady. He has the same smile, the same little expressions on his face. Do you remember Grady’s friend Miranda? I think you met her at the funeral. She came to see the baby and she cried. She said, “That’s Grady.” I really believe my baby is Grady reincarnated. He has come back.

Love,

Taylor

Oh, Taylor, Olivia thought.

She remembered Grady’s hidden lover, the young man who had seemed so out of place at his funeral, who had inherited her mother’s crystal glasses and had become friendly with Taylor, telling her about his interest in reincarnation. She supposed that was how this had started. But at the same time, Olivia was rather taken by the idea. She thought about how much she had adored Grady when he was a child at Mandelay, and how much she had missed him when he grew up and changed and started to seem so uncomfortable with the family. How wonderful it would be to have him here again. As long as Taylor treats this baby as himself and not like a little returned Grady, it will be all right, she thought.

She propped up the baby’s picture on her desk where she could see it. She had told Taylor she would start a scrapbook, but she realized she had so surprisingly few photos of any of her cousins that right now it seemed premature to get one for Baby Cody. She bought a frame instead.

Fall came, bright with changing leaves and a reviving crispness in the air. She and Roger talked again about how fast time seemed to be passing, how when you were young it had appeared endless, and now in a flash it was gone. And then one morning they woke up, turned on the television to watch the news, and saw the Santa Monica Mountains covered with towers of flame racing toward Topanga Canyon, where Taylor, Tim and Cody lived.

The sky on their screen glowed pink, the flames deep orange. The air was filled with thunderclouds of black smoke and raining white ash. Helicopters hovered overhead, dumping fire retardant and huge buckets of ocean water, but still the flames swept on. In the past few days Olivia had heard news reports that there were fires in California, but she hadn’t realized how terrible they were or how close to Taylor until this moment with the film of them before her eyes. It seemed unreal, like something seen in a movie, but it was not. Taylor’s house was now in the fire zone, but no one knew what was happening because the phone lines were down.

“What’s she going to do?” Olivia asked frantically, not really expecting an answer. “She has a little baby, she can’t even
hear
.”

“I’m sure they’ve been evacuated,” Roger said.

“Then they’ll have no home. Where will they go?”

“Let’s wait and see,” he said.

Even though she knew there would be no answer, she called Tim; and there was none. She spent a nervous day worrying about their safety, and between patients she turned on the portable radio she had brought to work. It was “some nut with a match,” the police said. But huge firestorms this year were “more probable than normal” in any case, authorities said. Six years of drought had left much dead vegetation in the canyons, a rainy spring had added thick new underbrush, there had been a long, dry summer and now there were the hot, dry Santa Ana winds fanning the fires, those winds that years ago, when she was a child, Stan had told her made people go crazy.

That evening Aunt Myra called. “Have you been watching the fires on TV?”

“Yes,” Olivia said.

“I called, but nobody can get through.”

“I know. I tried, too.”

“I guess Tim will call when they’re all right,” Aunt Myra said. She didn’t say
if
.

“I’m sure,” Olivia said, but that didn’t help right now. She imagined Taylor grabbing her mementos if she could and running away like a deer; but of course she and Tim would be driving, and the deer would be screaming and dying in the flames that roared up the rock faces and sped crackling along the ridge in pursuit. I know Taylor thinks it’s paradise, but who would want to live there, she thought. You never know what will happen.

The fires went on for a week, battled by increasingly exhausted fire crews, and then one day the winds stopped and they were over. Authorities said that the few fires that were still left seemed sure to be contained. In the Malibu area and the nearby canyons, more than thirty-five thousand acres had burned, and more than two hundred homes were gone. Tim called from his mobile phone.

“We’re all safe,” he said.

“Thank God,” Olivia said. “Where are you staying?”

“We’re still in our house. We were there all along, hosing it down. Fires are very arbitrary. The other side of our road is completely destroyed and we’re fine. The wind changed direction. And also, when the fire hit the cleared area around our house, it just stopped. Those two things saved us. We’re covered with ash, of course. Big white flakes, like snow, in everything, even the dishes. A whole mess to clean up. But Taylor’s good, the baby’s good, it’s all okay.”

Olivia sighed with relief. “I was worried.”

“Well, Grady’s house burned down,” Tim said. “Completely gone. Nothing left but the brick fireplace, just sticking up there.”

“At least
he
wasn’t in it,” Olivia said. “You have insurance for it, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said calmly. “To tell you the truth, Taylor’s kind of relieved it’s gone. She never could sell it. Now that worry is over.”

“You’re doubly lucky.”

“Yes. Very lucky. A lot of our friends aren’t.”

“I guess not.”

“Terrible thing,” he said. “But that’s nature.”

“Can’t live without it, can’t live with it?”

“Sort of. Well, got to make some more calls. If you talk to anybody in the family tell them we’re okay.”

“I will,” she said. “Tell Taylor I miss her, and give her my love.”

Thanksgiving was coming, and now with Taylor and her family safe, there was something more to be thankful for. As usual, all the cousins and their immediate families had their own plans, for feasting or for travel, and it was time for Olivia to plan her annual Thanksgiving dinner for the waifs and strays. She made out her guest list, and then, in an impulse of goodwill, she called Marc Delon to invite him, too.