A Summer Affair (17 page)

He felt guilty—not for himself, but for her. She had a husband, Jason Crispin, and she said she loved him. Lock wanted to know what she meant by this. How did she love him, how much did she love him, and if she loved him, why was she willing to be with Lock? Because she
was
willing. All through the fall, through the holidays, and into the winter, she met him. Some nights they stayed in the office; some nights they met in the garden at Greater Light, now a preserved (but little visited) historic site, and they made out like teenagers, with Claire sitting on the chilly cement steps as Lock reached into her blouse, then into her jeans. Sometimes they drove in Claire’s Honda Pilot beyond the water tower or to the end of Capaum Pond Road, where they grappled for each other over the children’s car seat, their feet muddling the pages from coloring books and empty juice boxes on the floor of the car. Lock was reluctant to make love in the car, not because it was uncomfortable (though it was), but because the children’s presence was almost palpable. The Honda was a piece of Claire’s actual life, it was an extension of her home, and Lock felt like an intruder. But Claire loved to have him in her car; she got a delicious satisfaction, she said, from remembering their coupling as she drove the children to school. And so they went out in the car frequently because, more than anything, Lock wanted to make Claire happy. Unlike Daphne, Claire could be made happy, and this was what satisfied Lock the most, what filled him up. Claire smiled, she laughed, she giggled.
I feel like a kid again,
she said.
You’ve changed my life.

He had gotten her back into the hot shop, back to work. He hadn’t thought of it as a come-on; if he thought of it at all, it was as a public service. The world, in his opinion, should not be without the art of Claire Danner Crispin. When he asked her to create a piece for the auction, he was pretty sure she’d be thrilled, flattered. He had not, at that time, understood why she had stopped working. He thought the break was temporary, a maternity leave. Now he knew the whole story, and while there was much that Lock wanted to say in response, he kept his mouth shut. He was glad he had gotten her back into the hot shop, working again.

You would have gone crazy,
he said.
Spending the rest of your life sponging countertops.

Oh, I don’t know... ,
she said.

But it was clear she loved being back at work. She was fired up again, she said.

Lock had a harder time convincing her that neither the fall nor Zack’s early delivery was her fault.

I was the one who fell,
she said.
I was dehydrated. I wasn’t drinking enough water. The temperature was unsafe, I knew that. My doctor warned me
. . .

She talked all the time about Zack. Lock had only seen Zack once, in passing, though Claire described him as very needy and “way behind” where her other kids were at his age. Lock thought it sounded bad, or potentially bad, and in an attempt to help, he gave Claire some information about Early Intervention (Nantucket’s Children funded them every year) as well as the name of a doctor in Boston. Lock thought Claire would be grateful for this information, but it immediately became clear that she resented it.

“You think there’s something wrong with him!”

“I don’t even know him, Claire. I haven’t spent five minutes with him. I only gave you the information because you seemed concerned and I wanted to help.”

This turned into an argument. For the first time, they parted on bad terms. Claire was sobbing about Zack—there was something wrong with him, it was her fault, she knew it—and there was Lock, rubbing her nose in it, giving her the number of a doctor in Boston, and of Early Intervention.
If I thought he needed Early Intervention,
she screamed,
I would have called them myself!
Lock had only been trying to help. He facilitated things like this all the time; it wasn’t his job to make a diagnosis, only to put people with problems in touch with people who could solve the problems. He’d tried to explain this to Claire, but she was having none of it. She drove off.

Lock didn’t hear from Claire for five days. Five empty, nearly unbearable days. He was distracted at work; every time the phone rang, he stopped what he was doing and watched Gavin, listening. Was it Claire? No. Every time he heard the door open at the bottom of the stairs, his heart leapt. No. He sent Claire one (vague) e-mail of apology, then another. She did not respond, but this wasn’t entirely surprising. Claire rarely checked her e-mail. Finally he decided he would stop by her house. This decision was both rash and carefully thought out. On the one hand, he didn’t want to see her cheerful, bustling household and feel bereft and lonely because his own home was as chilly and white as an empty icebox. After Siobhan had run across the two of them, together, in Claire’s car, they had made a rule about seeing each other during the day: they wouldn’t do it except in the name of legitimate gala business. There was, of course, a lot of legitimate gala business: Claire was working on production for the concert; she and Isabelle were back-and-forthing on the invite design, possible underwriting, and assignments for the committee members. Before the argument, Claire and Lock had had lunch on two occasions, once with Tessa Kline of
NanMag
. Tessa was doing a feature spread on Nantucket’s Children and Lockhart Dixon, executive director, and the annual summer gala, and Claire Danner Crispin, gala cochair and local artisan.

“I’ve always wanted to do a really in-depth piece like this,” Tessa said, “and bring in all these different, intersecting elements.”

They were at lunch at the Sea Grille, and Lock and Claire were sitting next to each other on the banquette while Tessa faced them, firing questions. At one point, Claire nudged Lock with her leg and he shifted away from her. They talked all the time about how important it was to “be careful.” Siobhan already harbored suspicions; they couldn’t have any more close calls. If they got caught, it would ruin everything: Claire’s marriage, her family life, Lock’s marriage, his reputation, and the reputation of Nantucket’s Children.

The affair was a grenade. Pull the pin, and everything got destroyed.

But Lock couldn’t stand thinking of Claire upset by something he’d done. He couldn’t let another day go by without seeing her.

He decided to go to Claire’s house under the pretense of dropping off a stack of underwriting letters that Claire had to sign and mail out, ASAP. Before the argument (and it couldn’t accurately be called an argument because they hadn’t fought or even disagreed—he had inadvertently offended her), Claire had asked him, all the time, to stop by and see her. It would be sweet, she said, and romantic, if he surprised her sometime.

Come in the early afternoon,
Claire said.
Jason is never home.

Lock wasn’t worried about Jason. He had actually bumped into Jason at Christmastime at Marine Home Center, where they were both buying tree stands. They stood in line together and made small talk.

Jason said, “Claire is really into that thing the two of you are working on.”

“Mmmm,” Lock said. “Yes. The gala.”

“Should be a hoot,” Jason said.

The man was affable enough, Lock thought. He had a toughness, a masculinity, that Lock lacked, but part and parcel with those traits was what Lock could only think of as ignorance. Lock wasn’t saying that Jason was stupid, but he wasn’t polished or worldly, and there were things he didn’t know or understand about Claire.

Once, after a few glasses of viognier at the office, Claire said, in regard to Jason, “Half the time, I’m his mother, and the other half I’m his sex slave.”

Lock said, sweeping her hair aside so he could kiss the back of her neck, “You deserve better, you know.” It was Lock’s opinion that Jason treated Claire like a feudal servant, and while he was angered by this, he was also grateful for it. The holes that Jason left were ones that Lock could fill. He could tell Claire she was beautiful, he could talk to her about her work, he could appreciate her, treat her gently, tenderly. He could clip poems out of the
New Yorker
or copy passages out of novels and know that the words and the sentiments were fresh. Claire kept the clippings in an unmarked folder.

“I love Jason,” she said. “But he’s not you.”

What did that mean? Lock took it to mean that he was giving Claire something she lacked, something she needed.

Claire had sex with her husband often. She used this word “often,” though she didn’t qualify it. For Lock and Daphne, once a month would have been often; before the accident, they had had sex once or twice a week. Lock feared that “often” for Claire meant even more frequently than that, but he couldn’t bear to dwell on it. When he and Claire were together, he couldn’t allow himself to become distracted by whether Claire had been employed as Jason’s sex slave the day before or even that very day. She never said a word. Her passion for Lock was pulsing and vocal every single time, and he was happy with that.

Well, he had no choice. Jason was the husband, the father of her children.

Lock went to Claire’s house after a lunch with the head of Marine Home Center to discuss a yearly giving plan. On his way back to the office, he decided he would drop off those underwriting letters, which did indeed have to go out. They were behind the eight ball as it was.

Lock knew Claire’s neighborhood, though he wasn’t exactly sure which house was hers. (Odd, he thought, that he didn’t even know which house his lover lived in.) Daphne had been to Claire’s house once for a women’s cocktail party or a baby shower and Lock had dropped her off, but that was ages ago, back in another lifetime. He turned onto Claire’s road—Featherbed Lane, an unfortunate name—his heart skipping, his lunch trying to find a way to comfortably settle. He was crossing a threshold, stepping over the line, into Claire’s actual life. Her house, on cozy, comfy Featherbed Lane. It was different from Claire’s stopping by the office; the office was public space and she belonged there now as much as he did. She would never dream of going to Lock’s house, that cold white palace on the edge of the water. She wouldn’t want to see Daphne, and Lock didn’t blame her.

He identified the house right away. There was something distinctive about it, which he had forgotten: an alcove around the front door. When Lock had dropped Daphne off long ago, it had been summer, the roof of the alcove had dripped with ivy and clematis (though now, in January, they were bare, brown vines), and on the step had sat a wide-bottomed green bottle with the word “Crispin” imprinted on the front. Claire’s car was in the driveway and there were hockey sticks leaning against the garage door, and a basketball trapped in an icy puddle. The day was very bright and cold. Lock squinted despite his sunglasses. He wore earmuffs—this had become something of a joke around town, people pointing out that since he was losing his hair, he really needed a hat—and an overcoat and wing-tip shoes. He felt like a salesman as he approached the door. He felt like a Jehovah’s Witness.

The house was a work of art. It was trimmed with mahogany and copper flashing; the light fixture next to the door was an antique. The front door was salvaged from somewhere—probably a farmhouse in Vermont. Lock knocked. He should have called first, though that belied the principle of “stopping by,” which was what Claire had said she wanted him to do. She wanted him to surprise her. Well, here he was. Surprise!

Lock heard a shuffle, a whispery noise, nearly imperceptible beneath his earmuffs. And then the door opened a crack. Lock saw a sliver of dark hair, one dark eye, a glint of silver. He heard a noise like a tiny bell.

“Yes?”

Now he really felt like a Jehovah’s Witness, a vacuum salesman. “Hi, I’m Lock Dixon. I work with Claire. Is she here?”

The door opened a little wider, revealing a girl, the Thai au pair. The lifesaver. The real reason Lock and Claire were able to conduct an affair. “She out back,” the girl said. “Hot shop.”

“Are you Pan?”

She nodded; the bell around her neck tinkled brightly. The door opened a little wider. “Okay you come in?” she said.

“Okay, I’ll come in,” he said. And then, just like that, he was in Claire’s house. To the left was a bench covered with bright cushions, and a pendant light with a stained-glass shade. A door led to a silvery powder room. The floors were maple, and to Lock’s right was an unusual twisting staircase, with balusters made from what looked like the staves of an oak wine barrel. The house was warm and it smelled like onions and ginger. He loved the house instantly and hated himself for loving it. His eyes darted around, as if he was a robber casing the joint, as he followed Pan into the great room: stone fireplace with a smoldering log, honed limestone countertops, Oriental rugs, a deep, red couch, exposed beams, cherry cabinets, copper pots, dried flowers, a large oval chalkboard that said:
Shea, 4 P.M. pickup rink! Milk!
Pan stirred something on the stove; it smelled wonderful. Behind the sofa were a few toys: a plush tiger, a plastic phone on a pull cord, some wooden blocks. Lock placed his stack of underwriting letters on the countertop next to a pile of mail. To hear Claire talk, he would have thought the house was a shambles. He expected drawers open, piles of laundry mounded on the club chairs, an inch of dust on the bookshelves, soggy breakfast cereal clogging the drain of the sink. But the house was orderly and clean and comfortable and splendid in every detail. The door to the mudroom was open and Lock could spy parkas and boots, a pair of ballet slippers hanging from pink satin ribbons; he heard the churning of the washing machine. The room smelled like woodsmoke, ginger, laundry detergent. His eyes filled with tears unexpectedly. He had dreamed of saving Claire from this place, but she was already safe. This was a home, and he was the wrecker. What was he doing?

“These are for Claire,” Lock said, indicating the pile of letters. “I’m just dropping them off.”

Pan nodded as she moved vegetables around with a wooden spoon. She saw him watching. “You hungry?” she said. “You want?”