A Summer Affair (33 page)

“Stop it, Edward.”

“I’m crazy about you. Look at me.”

She looked. She was very, very angry with him, but oddly her anger propelled her toward him rather than away from him. She wanted to punch him, to pound him. He had never been able to see her for who she really was—her own strong, clever, capable person—and she wanted him to see her now.

She led him into Isabelle’s pantry, which was big enough for a king-size bed. God, what a hypocrite she was. So self-righteous with Claire, and now look at her . . .

The pantry was dim; it smelled very strongly of truffle salt, which was, coincidentally, one of Siobhan’s favorite smells. Siobhan could hear the other guests chatting out on the sunporch; she should check on their drinks, light the citronella candles. She would, in a minute. Over Edward’s shoulder, she spied tapioca, baking powder, baking soda, a jar of black peppercorns, a jar of pink peppercorns, a tin of Colman’s dry mustard, and a small crystal jar of truffle salt, three ounces of the stuff, worth about forty dollars. Edward was looking at her expectantly. She liked this: she was driving the bus, she was in charge. She inhaled deeply, and Edward inhaled deeply also, as if they were playing a game of Simon Says, but Edward either didn’t notice the heady scent or he noticed it and didn’t know what it was. The man understood nothing about food.

Was she going to kiss Edward again, here in Isabelle’s pantry? She was not.

“Help me take some things out to the van,” Siobhan whispered.

He agreed happily. When he turned to leave the pantry, Siobhan slipped the jar of truffle salt into the pocket of her chef’s jacket. What was she doing? She felt like an incorrigible teenager, the kind who dyed her hair fuchsia, pierced her tongue, and hung around Piccadilly Circus. Thieving, from a client! She put the truffle salt back on the pantry shelf.

Edward was lingering by the kitchen sink. Siobhan pointed to covered dishes and platters drying upside down on dish towels, and Edward picked them up and followed her outside.

The night air surrounding Isabelle’s house smelled like rugosa roses and honeysuckle, and the only sounds were the crickets. A car pulled up to the end of the driveway, and Edward and Siobhan both watched as Dara and the cab driver wrestled the cello into the back of the cab. Then the cab disappeared, and the lights that their movements had turned on turned off again, just like that. It was dark.

Siobhan set the platters safely in the back of the van, as did Edward. Then he grabbed her by the hips and they kissed, and his hands went right up inside Siobhan’s chef’s jacket. She was consumed, once again, with fury. Wasn’t it just like Edward to assume that he could flip Siobhan like an egg, over easy? Wasn’t it just in accordance with his view of the world to assume that she would feel the same way about him as he felt about her? She did not feel the same way! She was livid and she would tell him so. She had no intention of following Claire into the dark forest of adultery, despite the fact that Carter had been unfaithful (and untruthful) with and about the family’s finances. Siobhan was going to make Edward see her and hear her—and then she would rip herself away.

But at that second, something happened. Edward stopped. He pulled back. He touched her face, ran his thumbs over her cheekbones, then over her lips. He pushed her glasses up, just as he used to when they were dating. Siobhan had always loved this gesture. She had to admit that in all her life, no one had paid as close attention to her as Edward. She thought of the calla lilies he’d sent when Liam broke his arm. The bell had rung, and she opened the door, saw the delivery person with an armload of calla lilies, and knew they were from Edward.

“I still love you,” he said. “I haven’t stopped loving you for one second.”

“Oh,” Siobhan said. She knew this to be true, and yet the words caught her by surprise. Or else it was his tone of voice that caught her by surprise. It was very tender.

“You hurt me,” Edward said. “When you left. When you turned right around and married Carter. My heart broke.”

Siobhan nodded. She was too stunned to speak.

“You didn’t feel the way about me that I felt about you,” Edward said. “You were right not to marry me in that case. But here it is, more than ten years later, and I’m still in love.”

Siobhan’s anger shrank until it was like a pebble at her feet that she could kick away. She did not allow herself to revisit the demise of her relationship with Edward very often, mostly because she had behaved regrettably—throwing the ring in Edward’s face and, six months later, marrying Carter in Ireland. She didn’t like to see Edward because seeing him reminded her of the person she’d been then—a woman who would break an engagement and immediately take up with another man. Siobhan had not allowed Edward any closure; when he came to her house “to talk,” Carter was there and Siobhan had asked Edward, curtly, to leave. Awful! She still had the ring—the beautiful and expensive symbol of Edward’s love and commitment—in her jewelry box. The ring taunted her. She had not been able to get rid of it, to take it to a pawnshop or sell it on eBay, because . . . why? Because of something Siobhan herself did not understand. Because she had been waiting for something. She had been waiting, maybe, for tonight.

Siobhan pressed her head against Edward’s chest. Edward was a good man, a good person; he would be a wonderful father and an amazing provider. Siobhan had not loved him enough or in the right way, and there was no crime in that, but there was a crime in not behaving like a decent human being. Facing Edward all these years—even the blurred glimpse of him as they passed each other in their cars—had meant facing her worst failure.

She couldn’t apologize, however. She didn’t have the words at her disposal and she feared anything she said would sound lame or overwrought, not to mention ten years late. So she raised her face and she kissed him as softly as she possibly could, and the kiss stirred her, it excited her in a way she had forgotten she could be excited, and soon they were kissing crazily, they were two people in a movie, kissing and sucking and pawing each other. She was going to follow Claire into the dark forest! She was going to shag Edward. She would sin, but it would be ameliorated, in a way, by Siobhan’s making things right with Edward. She would be giving him something he’d been waiting for for ten years.

Where? There, in the back of the van? The back of the van was cluttered with dishes. Her chef’s jacket was now open, exposing her camisole underneath, and Edward’s shirt was unbuttoned at the top. She could see he was ready to go, and she was certainly ready. Her mind flickered to Claire, Isabelle, Lock—all still inside, right? Blotting glue on the envelopes with the dainty sponges, peeling stamps, discussing the names of the people on the invitation list (“He’s the one with the house on Shawkemo Road . . . whose wife died of . . . and then, the next summer, he married a twenty-five-year-old”). Was anyone looking for Edward or Siobhan? Most certainly not. Everyone inside was drunk, anyway.

“My car,” Edward said. “The hood of my car.”

Siobhan thought he was kidding. It would be bad enough when she confessed to Father Dominic about the adultery, but imagine the look on Father’s face when she told him it had happened on the hood of Edward’s Jaguar! But Edward had a point: The hood of his car was tucked under the branches of a large tree. Even in the dark, it was in shadows, and it was the car parked farthest from the house.

Yes! Hurry! They were sneaking now, tiptoeing over the crushed white shells of Isabelle’s driveway. Siobhan felt lawless and heady. Was she really going to do this? It seemed so. Just the one time, and it was Edward, an old lover, not a new lover. Did that make it any less treacherous than what Claire was doing? Claire was in love; that was her justification. Siobhan was not in love with Edward; she had fallen out of love with Edward or had never been properly in love with him, she had lied to him about that or had misrepresented herself, the lie had broken his heart, and she felt guilty. And so now here she was, sinning in order to make things right. It made sense to Siobhan but it was also perfectly fucked up. Would she go to hell? Would she and Claire go together?

She smelled somebody’s cigarette.

“Who’s out there?” a voice shouted.

Edward whipped around. “Hello?” he said. He held Siobhan with one hand, and the other hand flew to his shirt buttons. Siobhan clenched her chef’s jacket together in front and peered around Edward.

Gavin Andrews came crunching around the corner. When he saw Edward and Siobhan, he shouted, “Ahh!”

And Siobhan screamed, “Ahh!”

Gavin put a hand to his heart. “Jesus,” he said. “You scared me! I thought there was a burglar out here!”

“A burglar?” Siobhan said, thinking automatically of the truffle salt. But she had put it back!

“No burglars,” Edward said. “It’s just us.”

“Yes,” Gavin said, taking a drag off his cigarette. “I can see that.”

They stood for a moment in awkward silence. Okay, Siobhan thought. She was not going to shag Edward. Gavin Andrews, of all people, had arrived like a sign from God and put a stop to it. Now Siobhan had to worry about what this looked like. Did it look like she and Edward were about to shag on the hood of Edward’s car? Oh, God, Siobhan hoped not. It was safe to bet that half the gossip on the island of Nantucket started with Gavin Andrews.

“I was helping Siobhan put dishes in her van,” Edward said. Somehow he had gotten his buttons done and his shirt straightened and he looked perfectly normal and presentable. But Siobhan looked like she had just fallen out of bed after a legendary ravishing. “How’s everything inside?”

“Oh,” Gavin said. He blew a stream of smoke through his nose. “Fine.”

T
hey had both had a lot to drink and it was very late, nearly midnight, but an opportunity like this didn’t present itself often, so they took it. They drove to Altar Rock and looked at the moon. It had been nearly two weeks since they’d been alone together, and although they’d talked every day, they hadn’t
really
talked, and so as Claire lay in Lock’s arms, she told him all of the things that she’d been saving up for him—that she loved him, that she missed him, that her heart was lonely, starved, suffocating without him. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could go on this way.

He kissed her neck. “The Eiffel Tower,” he said. “The post office.”

“I know,” she murmured. “I know.” Play cards, eat Big Macs, go to the movies, do the things that other people did, do them together. She’d had a lot to drink, and it was affecting her. Here she was, in the middle of the night, in the most beautiful place in the world. Altar Rock, the highest point on the island, was not much more than a hill, but it looked out over the moors and ponds. This was her home, in the moonlight. She was only going to be alive once. Shouldn’t she be happy?

She didn’t know how much longer she could stay married to Jason and have Lock stay married to Daphne. She and Lock were in love, she, desperately and stupidly, blindly and completely. She was a slave, a goner. She would give up everything for him.

But was this true? Could she really imagine a future with Lock? What would that look like? Would she move out? (Inconceivable.) Would he move out? (More conceivable, but where would he go? He couldn’t live with Claire
in Jason’s house
.) Would they both move out and get a place together? Where would the kids go? With her, presumably. She could not imagine life without her kids, but neither could she imagine Lock living with her kids. She fantasized about a life with Lock, but she realized that this would have to take place in an alternate reality, one where they had no jobs, no responsibilities, no ex-spouses or children to care for, no friends, no connections. They would have to move to Ibiza, two displaced strangers, and start over. Claire felt like a marionette; Lock could swoop in and clip all the strings that were tying her to her current life, but then she would collapse, lifeless. She would be a person without form. The worst thing about adultery was that it made you see your life for what it was: something that was nearly impossible to escape. Claire cried a little at this, and Lock squeezed her and whispered, “Hey, it’s okay. I’m here. I love you.”

“I know,” she said. They saw each other so infrequently now that when they did have time together, it became weighted and tangled with emotion. This was Claire’s fault. She had worries to soothe and problems to fix. She was becoming tiresome, even to herself.

“I should go,” she said.

He released her. She wanted him to say,
Not yet,
or
So soon?
But he simply agreed. “Yes,” he said. “It’s late.”

Claire’s head was buzzing from the alcohol. Claire checked on each one of her kids, all of them sleeping, even Zack in his crib. Jason was snoring softly in their bed. He had taken the kids for pizza and ice cream and to the playground at Children’s Beach.
Mom has another meeting!
He seemed resigned to life without her; he was making the most of it, enjoying it, even—and Claire had a somber vision of Jason packing the kids up and whisking them away. Leaving her alone. God, she deserved it. She lay awake fretting about this (where would they go? Yellowstone? Bar Harbor? They would go someplace Jason could fish), and then she worried about other things: Lock, the chandelier, money.

She had made a promise she couldn’t keep. She had agreed to take a $25,000 table. Part of her had known all along that she would do this, that she would never be able to eat crow and say,
Sorry, I can’t afford it
. It was a matter of pride—in front of Isabelle, in front of Lock. She had lied and told everyone at the table (as well as Siobhan, who was floating around the table) that she had set money aside. This had sounded feasible. But it was not remotely feasible—Claire had gone over their finances again and again. She and Jason had sizable IRAs, which could not be touched, and they had $42,000 in savings. There was no way Claire could demolish more than half of their savings on the gala. She had told herself that after the gala she would make an effort with her business and solicit a new commission from Mr. Fred Bulrush or Jeremy Tate-Friedman. But now Claire couldn’t even pay the electric bills for the shop, much less get ahead to the tune of $25,000. She had considered going to the bank and taking out a loan and paying it off over the next calendar year. That seemed like the most responsible course of action . . . until she thought of Matthew.