The Widow's Season (27 page)

“I like these fireworks,” she said, watching how the smooth water mirrored the glow; women in cocktail dresses waded through the flames. She took off her shoes and followed Nate down the beach, away from the fire and food and laughter, deep into the shadows, where he put his right hand behind her back, twined her fingers with his left, and rested his cheek in her hair. And there, in the cool sand, they began to dance, the dance that had been overdue for seventeen years. It was hardly even a dance, that slow shuffle, but Sarah felt that a circle was completing itself, their unfinished business was being put to rest.

Something about the sand and the water and the palm trees seemed oddly familiar, until it came to her.

“You’ve been here with Jenny.”

Nate stepped back and looked into her eyes. “Yes. Twice. How did you know?”

“The picture on your hall table.”

Sarah marveled at how she felt nothing, no disappointment or betrayal. It seemed completely natural.

“Why did you two break up?” she asked as they continued their shuffling steps.

“She wanted to get married . . . And more than that. She wanted to have children right away. You know how I feel about children.”

“Yes, I know. How old is Jenny?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“She’s young, then.”

“Sure, but she doesn’t appreciate it.”

Sarah leaned her cheek on Nate’s shoulder. “The two of you seemed well matched.”

“And you and I, Sarah? Are we well matched?”

She smiled, thinking that nothing could be further from the truth.

“For this one night,” she said, “in this one winter, we are perfect.”

PART FOUR

Resolutions

“What did you do for New Year’s Eve?”

David was standing over a chopping board, spreading mayonnaise on a thin slice of honey-wheat bread. It was the fourth of January and Sarah had come as an act of penitence.

She sat at the table, staring out toward the icy river. “I watched some fireworks. How about you?”

“I went to bed before midnight. But in the morning I got dressed early and walked outside. The first snow of the year had fallen, and I’ve never seen the world so quiet.” He washed his hands and came to the table with a plate of ham sandwiches.

“There were deer tracks leading into the woods, and I followed them for a hundred yards, but I didn’t find anything. The river was frozen in the flat sections, so I walked out onto the water about three yards from the bank, until bubbles came up under my boots. Then I stepped back to where the ice was thick, and I stood there on the river, looking up at the cliffs.”

His voice was unemotional, which made Sarah turn to face him. “It sounds nice.”

He shook his head. “It was too quiet. I’ve decided that this is the only winter I’ll spend here at the cabin.”

“Where will you go?”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it.”

David took a sandwich to the couch and turned on the same
Lord of the Rings
film that he had been staring at all morning. As Sarah watched him, she supposed that she had made a mistake, to have introduced a television into the cabin’s peaceful quiet. David had never been a screen addict back in Jackson; he had been too busy with patients and painting and dinner parties. But now his mind was filled with two-dimensional worlds. She sighed as she turned away from him, thinking that he was right; David should not stay here for another winter.

She pulled on his hiking boots and Gore-Tex jacket and walked toward the door. “I’m going for a walk, want to come?” He didn’t answer.

Outside the snow was melting, leaving puddles covered in thin layers of ice. She pressed one with the ball of her foot, and the surface cracked into a broad white web, reminding her of a traffic accident she and David had experienced years ago. For some reason she hadn’t been wearing a seat belt, and when a car rear-ended them at a red light, her body had lurched forward, the front of her scalp burrowing into the windshield. White cracks had spread like electric currents.

She remembered how gently David had touched her as they stood outside the car, waiting for the police. He had lifted her eyelids with the tips of his thumbs, examining her pupils for signs of concussion, and then, with equal softness, he had traced the bones of her brow and cheek, running his fingers across her jaw and pressing at the back of her neck.

“Does it hurt here? Or here?”

No, the only pain was beneath her bangs, where a bruise the size of a golf ball had swollen outward, lavender and lime and royal blue.

“The body is fragile,” he had said as he brushed her hair away from her forehead. “You must take care of yourself.”

His words came back as she stood beside the river, hugging her arms tightly around her waist. She had loved him for his tenderness in those days, especially after her parents died, when she had wanted to be guided and pampered and soothed; she had loved his almost paternal care. It was only in recent years that his authority had begun to grate, and that her unhappiness with her own life had manifested itself in dissatisfaction with him. Then she had understood how it was possible for a man to
do
nothing wrong, and still to
be
wrong, day after day.

Now it was decision time, because if David was leaving then she must choose whether to follow him—to give up the house, the college, the town, and most of all, Margaret. The only New Year’s resolution she had made thus far was to say good-bye to Nate, a feat she hadn’t managed while they were in the Bahamas. It had seemed ungracious, to call things off after he had spent so much money, and she had wanted to enjoy the beach and the rum without any wounded feelings hovering between them.

But now there were no excuses. Sarah lobbed a stone high into the air, onto the opposite bank. She would have to end the affair with Nate, then decide what to do about David.

Over the next few weeks procrastination set in. Winter drained all impetus for change, and she resumed her old habit of staying in bed until noon, padding through the house in thick socks and terry cloth. Her few active hours passed in the kitchen, as she experimented with an ever-increasing bounty from the grocery store. For dinner she fixed pad thai and coconut-ginger soup; for breakfast she baked zucchini bread topped with pineapple cream cheese.

“I mean to get fat and sassy,” she explained to Margaret when she arrived at Friday tea with a platter of chocolate muffins.

“Instead of thin and bitter?” Margaret asked with a smile.

“You know me too well.”

She had made one resolution to which she managed to cling: she would no longer drive to Charlottesville. Passivity was almost a strategy; if she initiated nothing, Nate would eventually tire of the drive. The mountains formed a natural barrier, encouraging the two of them to blend back into their separate valleys.

But when Nate asked to come to her, she did not resist. He visited twice in January, first at midmonth, when he called from his office on a Friday, offering to bring a take-out Indian dinner. Sarah could never refuse a man bearing food, and for the first time that year she wore earrings and a necklace.

Nate wooed her with pakoras, garlic naan, and vindaloo. The spices made them sweat, and after dinner they showered together, washing each other’s body until they felt mutually spotless. For a moment she forgot about Jenny and David and all of the shadows that lingered between them. So long as she and Nate remained within a private universe, she thought she might enjoy his company for a little while longer.

But on his second visit the outside world intruded. They had agreed to see a movie, something mindless yet sufficient to get Sarah out of the house. Unfortunately she hadn’t considered how many acquaintances she would meet in a town the size of Jackson, and outside the ticket booth two of her former students eyed Nate and giggled.

“Let’s sit in back,” Sarah said when they entered the theater.

“But the seats are much better up here.” Nate kept on walking.

Midway down the aisle she spotted a trio of teachers from the elementary school. Margaret was at the far end, and she acknowledged Sarah with a slight nod. Sarah tried to be casual, waving back as she and Nate sat down four rows ahead. But halfway through the movie, when he put his arm around her shoulder, she could feel the women’s eyes following his fingers, and each stroke through her hair was another public lashing. She remained immovable until the end of the credits, when a teenage boy approached with a mop and a trash bag.

Her visits to the cabin weren’t much better. The absence of color in the landscape seemed to drain David’s spirit. He painted little, and instead spent hours chopping wood with a fanatical concentration, arms swinging up and down, implacable as an oil drill. It looked as if he were trying to kill something, battling against winter, or perhaps clearing a path to see his way ahead. When he rested in front of the television, the ax leaned against its bounty—a three-foot high-water mark, ominously rising.
The center cannot hold,
Sarah thought as she watched him from across the room.
Things fall apart
.

Outside, her walks grew longer and more solitary. She saw the pine trees crusted with snow, the junipers shagged with ice, and heard a misery in the sound of the wind.
One must have a mind of winter,
she recited to the air, and when she returned to the cabin she saw, for the first time,
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is
.

At home, on her kitchen calendar, Sarah colored February 14 with a red question mark. All month she dreaded the date, debating the proper etiquette for a woman with two lovers, and when the afternoon finally arrived, she bought a bottle of Royal Copenhagen and took it to her kitchen table, where she tied a red bow around the silver box, then sat and stared at it. She and David had always spent Valentine’s Day together; no patients or students were allowed to interrupt their annual dinner, and she supposed that nothing, not even death, should break that tradition. If she left for the cabin by five-thirty, she could stop on the way for pizza and drugstore chocolates.

The doorbell rang just as she was searching for her car keys, but when she opened the front door, she found no one outside. The porch, the steps, the walkway—all were empty. She crossed to the porch railing and peered down into the magnolia’s shade, where David had been waiting on Halloween night; no one was there. Shrugging, she stepped back, turned around, and gasped.

“Surprise.” Nate was standing in her hallway in his business suit, brandishing two lobsters like a pair of pistols.

“Work was slow today, so I thought I’d leave early and make dinner for us. I parked down the street so you wouldn’t hear me coming, and I let myself in through the back.” He smiled at her stare. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“I was just going out.”

“Where?”

“To get some pizza.”

“This will be much better than pizza, don’t you think?”

He walked into the kitchen and settled the lobsters in the twin basins of her sink. Then he reached into a brown bag on the counter and pulled out a bundle of fresh asparagus and a bottle of Chardonnay.

“You have rice, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Sarah followed him in. “But I really don’t think—”

“Oh, how sweet.” He lifted the bottle of cologne from the kitchen table.

While Nate untied the bow, Sarah imagined David alone with his near-empty cupboards. She had never seen a calendar at the cabin, and she hoped that he wasn’t keeping track of dates. Tomorrow she would make it all up to him.

“Just sit down.” Nate poured her a glass of wine, and she took a small sip.

“Put on some music,” Nate said. “And try to relax.”

When dinner was ready he set the dining-room table with candles and her new embroidered tablecloth. He tied a plastic bib from the seafood store around Sarah’s neck, brought her one plate with a still-steaming lobster, and another with asparagus, rice pilaf, and bread. When her nutcracker punctured the lobster’s claw, Sarah cringed at the pale, stringy liquid that ran across her plate. But Nate flinched at nothing. He tore the tail off Sarah’s lobster, sliced it open with a serrated knife, and presented her with the unscathed meat. After dinner he poured Kahlúa into small cups of coffee, and they sat on the living-room couch, warm and full.

“I have a gift for you.” Nate returned to the kitchen one last time, and came back with a small red box topped with a silver bow.

More jewelry, thought Sarah. More diamonds. But when she unwrapped the box she lifted a glass jar with a gold label. “Chocolate body paint,” she read. “This is a gift for
you
.”

“For both of us. Wait for me in the bedroom. I’ll go and heat it up.”

She remained on the couch for a long time, tracing the flowers in the upholstery with the tip of her finger. This should have been David’s night; she should have been insistent. Should have, should have. She sighed and rose to her feet. Tomorrow she would try to slow this train down, but for now it was Valentine’s Day, and Nate made a lovely Eros. She pulled her sweater over her head as she walked down the hall.