A Summer Affair (5 page)

She stood up. “I don’t work anymore,” she said, astonishing herself. She wanted to give back to the universe, she wanted to act in kindness—but even she had her limits.

The kids were all asleep when Claire got home, and she checked on them one by one, rooting around like a raccoon in the dark. They seemed reasonably clean, the girls’ hair was combed, and J.D.’s homework was complete, though stuffed into his backpack like garbage. Claire smoothed out the pages of long division and tucked it in neatly. In the nursery, she pulled the blanket over Zack’s shoulders and stroked his cheek. God, how she worried about him! He
was
healthy, despite having been a preemie; her pediatrician, Dr. Patel, reassured her of this again and again.

In their bedroom, Jason was waiting for her. He wanted sex all the time, even after so many years of marriage. Tonight would have been a good night to indulge him with a serious, creative effort, but sex seemed too tame for Claire’s mood. Her meeting with Lock Dixon had gotten her gears turning. She wanted to pore over her back issues of
GlassArt
. She wanted to go into the hot shop—museum-quality piece!—and sketch until dawn.

“Come to bed,” Jason said.

Thinking about the hot shop suddenly felt illicit. “How were the kids?”

“Fine. Come to bed.”

“Don’t you want to know how my meeting was?”

“How was your meeting?”

“It was amazing,” she said. He didn’t ask her to elaborate, and Claire thought,
Why bother?
Her definition of amazing was completely different from Jason’s definition of amazing. Jason was a contractor; amazing for him was the plumber showing up on time. It was a thirty-nine-inch striper caught with a fly.

“Come to bed, please, Claire. Please, baby?”

“Okay,” she said. She brushed her teeth, then took her time washing her face and moisturizing, then wiping down the granite vanity and the bowl of the sink, hoping that Jason would fall asleep. But when she crawled into bed, Jason had his light on. He was facing her side of the bed with his hands out, like she was a basketball he was about to catch.

“The kids didn’t wear you out?” she asked.

“Naw, they were great.”

“You read to them?”

“I read to Zack. Ottilie read to Shea. J.D. did his homework, then read his chapter book.”

“Good,” Claire said, relaxing. “So, the meeting . . .” She paused—not because she was hesitant to admit that it had only been her and Lock at the meeting, but because Jason’s hands were already traveling up inside her camisole. He wasn’t interested in what had transpired at her meeting. Claire grabbed Jason’s wrists, but he was persistent, and she let him go. Their sex life was robust, but there was a part of their marriage that had withered, if it had ever existed at all. What was it? They didn’t talk. If Claire said these words now to Jason,
We don’t talk,
he would tell her she was being silly. He would say,
We talk all the time
. Yes, about the kids, about what was for dinner, about the car being serviced, about Joe’s fortieth birthday next week, about what bills needed to be paid, about when he’d be home from work. But if Claire tried to explain her meeting with Lock and its many tangents—Matthew, how it felt to think about Matthew, how it felt to think about Daphne and the accident, Lock’s interest in Claire’s glass and his request that she come out of retirement on behalf of the auction item—Jason would glaze over. Bored. She would be keeping him from what was really important—the sex! Furthermore, he might grow angry at what Claire told him: Who was
Lock Dixon
to tell his wife to start blowing glass again? It was easier for Claire to keep her mouth shut, to indulge Jason physically and try to quiet the agitation in her mind.

Find Matthew. Museum-quality piece. Silver belt buckle. The
Jungle Series.
Whalebone corsets. Viognier that tasted like a meadow. Fifty thousand dollars. Classical music: she really should learn more about it.

She closed her eyes and kissed her husband.

CHAPTER TWO

He Haunts Her

T
he Crispin children started waking up at six thirty. They awoke in reverse order to their age—Zack first, then Shea. At four and a half, Shea was very challenging. J.D. and Ottilie had always been labeled “the big kids,” which left Shea and Zack as “the babies,” but Shea did not appreciate being called a baby, nor did she like being lumped in with Zack. As a result, she was constantly trying to distinguish herself; everything had to be done “the Shea way.” Her pancakes had to be cut with a chef’s knife because she liked “square pieces”; otherwise the pieces would be called “ugly” and were therefore inedible. She would not sit next to Ottilie at any meal, and she would not have her hair styled like Ottilie’s, nor would she wear any of Ottilie’s hand-me-downs. Ottilie, for her part, was preternaturally beautiful, with long hair streaked the colors of fine wood—mahogany, heart pine, Brazilian cherry. She was, at the age of eight, already a teenager, already using her ballet training to swing her hips provocatively. Ottilie was precocious, brilliant, adept at sweet-talking her parents, her teachers, her legions of friends. And J.D., Claire’s oldest, was a golden child, reading three grades above level, a leader on the ball field and the basketball court, an altar boy at Saint Mary’s. He was pleasant and easygoing and respectful. If Claire received compliments about her parenting, it was because she had great kids. But they were great on their own; they had been born great. Claire didn’t want to take any credit.

She did, however, try hard as a mother. She would say she’d always tried hard, had always put her children’s needs before her own—but now that there was no glass in her life, she channeled all her frenetic, creative energy into parenting. Her kids were only going to be young once; she wanted to enjoy them. She now had time to pack healthy lunches, to volunteer in all three classrooms, to chaperone field trips, to read
Harry Potter
aloud at night, to make every practice, every ball game, and every ballet lesson early or on time. She was more focused; her house was cleaner; her kids, she thought, were happier now that they had her full attention. Her parenting wasn’t perfect, but it was earnest and well intentioned.

Just look at Claire this morning: She made breakfast for four kids (bacon, buttermilk pancakes, chocolate milk, vitamin pills). She chose clothes for four kids (the only one she could truly dress anymore was Zack; with the other three, the struggle was what matched, what was appropriate for school, what was clean). She packed lunch for three kids (J.D. liked strawberries, Ottilie demanded an obscene amount of mayonnaise on her sandwich, and Shea was “allergic” to strawberries—the only “fruit” she would eat without a fight was canned mandarin oranges). Claire kept track of homework, library books, permission slips, and whatever equipment—cleats, gloves, skates, goggles—they needed for their after-school activities (there was a color-coded schedule taped to the fridge)
.
It wasn’t always the well-oiled machine that Claire dreamed of. Often, there were extenuating circumstances: someone had a “stomach ache” or a luridly loose tooth; it was pouring rain, or blizzarding sideways, or Zack had one of his inexplicable screaming fits and the noise pushed them all to the edge of insanity.
Mom, make him stop!
Many times, Claire stood in her own kitchen and thought,
I can’t believe I make it through the morning, much less the rest of the day
. Many times, Claire felt like a triage nurse: What needed her attention first?

This was the life she had chosen. She repeated certain thoughts like a mantra—
Good mother! Only young once! Enjoy them!
— as she shepherded them out the door.

Claire drove the kids to school. She took two to the elementary school and one to Montessori. Zack was strapped into his car seat, crying for his bottle, which none of the other three deigned to give him. Shea plugged her ears. The car was always loud, but Claire made a point to call Siobhan anyway. Siobhan had stopped at two kids, but Liam and Aidan were total hellions and fought incessantly, and Siobhan’s car was just as noisy.

“I woke up this morning and checked my calendar,” Siobhan said. “I see I missed your meeting last night. How was it?”

“Oh,” Claire said. The meeting had been a scant twelve hours earlier, and yet it had slipped down the drain with the dishwater. Her excitement had vaporized. But something lingered, some feelings about Lock Dixon. Could she share these feelings with Siobhan? She and Siobhan were married to brothers; they were frank with each other about their marriages. They loved to complain—
sneaking cigarettes, too much TV, always bugging me for sex—
and they loved to one-up each other when they complained. (Because Siobhan and Carter worked together, she claimed they were twice as sick of each other at the end of the day.) Siobhan had a crush on the Korean UPS man; Claire thought the twenty-year-old who picked up her trash was cute. They talked about other men in a funny, harmless way all the time. But Claire decided not to say anything about Lock, if only because she couldn’t tell what her feelings were, exactly. “It was fine. We talked about preliminary stuff.”

“Do you have a cochair?” Siobhan asked.

“I do. A woman named Isabelle French.”

“Isabelle French?”

“Yeah. Do you know her?”

Siobhan was quiet. This was very strange. Claire checked her phone, thinking it had cut out.

“Are you there?” Claire said.

“Yep.”

“Is everything okay?”

“We did a luncheon for Isabelle French this summer,” Siobhan said.

“You did? Where does she live?”

“Out in Monomoy. But not on the harbor. In the woods. On Brewster Road. Between Monomoy and Shimmo, really.”

“Okay, so what’s the deal? Did she not pay her bill? Was she a total bitch?”

“No, she was fine. With me.”

“Was she rude to Alec?” Alec was Siobhan and Carter’s Jamaican head server. “Did she use a racial slur?”

“No,” Siobhan said. “She was fine, agreeable, very nice. There was just this awful moment when she was out on the porch chatting away, and a coven of witches were in the kitchen slicing her to ribbons. I guess there was an incident in New York. She was at some big party and she drank too much and she kissed some woman’s husband on the dance floor, and it turned into this big thing where no one would speak to her and she stopped getting invited to things. She used to sit on the board of one of the big hospitals, but I guess they asked her to step down. It didn’t sound too good.”

“They were talking about her behind her back in
her
kitchen?” Claire said.

“Yeah. It made me nauseated, honestly.”

“Did they know you were there, listening?”

“I’m the caterer. Did they care?”

“So, do you think it’s bad that she’s my cochair?”

“No, I don’t think it’s bad,” Siobhan said. “Just so you know, her own people don’t like her.”

Claire and Zack walked back into the house at ten past eight, and the silence was like a big sigh of relief. Pan sat at the counter eating a bowl of Cocoa Puffs, a cereal forbidden to the children.

Why does Pan get to eat it?

Well, Pan is an adult.

Pan was twenty-seven years old, from an island off the southwest coast of Thailand, in the Andaman Sea. Pan had arrived after Zack was born to work as an au pair, although Claire liked to think of it as a “cultural exchange.” With Zack’s difficult birth, and with the demands of a fourth child, having an extra set of hands in the house seemed wise. Having Pan around allowed Claire to be a better mother. Pan played creative games with the older children, she cleaned and straightened, she prepared mouthwatering Thai food, but she was the best, perhaps, with Zack. In Thailand, apparently, babies were never put down. They were constantly carried and therefore they did not cry. When Zack was with Pan, he was held and carried. When Zack was with Claire, and Claire, out of necessity, set him down—
I have to get dinner ready, sweetie
—he howled. Sometimes it was so bad that Pan came out of her room and picked him up, and although Claire was then relieved, she was also suspicious. Maybe Zack’s problem was that he was coddled, spoiled, soft. Maybe all of Pan’s nurturing had quelled Zack’s natural desire to explore, to learn, to interact. Or maybe Pan held him all the time because she, too, sensed there was something wrong.

“Here,” Pan said. “I take.” She stood up from her stool and reached for Zack.

“You finish. I’ve got him.”

“I take,” Pan said. Zack was no fool. He lunged for her.

“Okay,” Claire said. And then, like an automaton: “I have a hundred things to do.” Such as the breakfast dishes—plates sticky with syrup, cups with chocolate sludge coating the bottom—and then the counters and the stools. Then Claire went upstairs. The kids nominally made their beds, but Claire had to remake them. She was put out by the thought of her children climbing into a sloppy bed. She liked crisp, clean sheets and a neatly folded comforter. She flushed the toilet in the kids’ bathroom, put all of the toothbrushes into the plastic cup, and rinsed the dried toothpaste out of the sink. But what she realized was that she was watching herself do these things rather than just doing them. She was doing them and at the same time wondering what Lock Dixon would think if he were watching her. Or Matthew. God, she had to find Matthew.

She got started on the laundry. If she missed a day of laundry, it spiraled out of control. Did any of these details matter to anybody but Claire? The details that ruled her life, the five thousand tasks that cropped up in her day like obstacles in a video game—if Claire died or got sick, or took on a consuming project such as the summer gala, and these tasks didn’t get done, what would happen? Would the house get run into the ground? Would her children become derelicts? In her heart she believed the answer was yes. Her efforts mattered. She threw a load of darks into the machine.

At ten o’clock she tried to do some yoga on the floor of her bedroom. She unrolled a mat and positioned herself in downward dog. The room was filled with sunlight, and being in downward dog felt good. She wondered again about Lock Dixon. If he could see her this second, would he be impressed by her flexibility? (No. Even Claire’s ninety-two-year-old grandmother could do downward dog.) She was too lazy to get herself into another position, and honestly, it had been so long since she’d made it to yoga that she’d forgotten all the positions, anyway. If she tried one now, it would be incorrect and offer no real benefit.

She sat up. Her head was buzzing. She hadn’t eaten anything; she had forgotten herself. And that was the reason Claire was so thin; it had nothing to do with yoga.

The phone rang. Would it be Lock? One thing about cochairing the summer gala was that the phone would ring and it would be Lock, or Isabelle French—or Matthew!—instead of Jeremy Tate-Friedman, her client from London, telling her he’d had a dream about an orchestra that played instruments made of glass. Would Claire, for the right price, consider making a glass flute, one that actually worked? (Her career had been subject to—indeed, dependent on—the eccentricities of a handful of very wealthy people.) Claire checked the caller ID: it was Siobhan. But Claire didn’t pick up the phone; she had too much on her mind. It was still Lock. Okay, this was pitiful. The man was following her around her own house like a ghost who had unfinished business with the living. Why? What did he want? He wanted her to create a museum-quality piece of glass for the auction. He wanted her to burst out of retirement, like a woman jumping out of a cake, in front of a thousand paying guests. Break the shackles of motherhood, emerge from the cave where she had been shutting herself away like a hermit. She had been out of the hot shop for months and —
Just admit it, Claire!
—she missed it. A part of her yearned for it. People like Jeremy Tate-Friedman called, and Elsa, the woman who owned the shop Transom, called. (Would Claire produce another
Jungle Series
? The vases had sold so quickly!) But these people did not provide the right impetus for Claire to return to the hot shop. Lock, somehow, had pushed a different button. He had used the element of surprise. He read
GlassArt;
he knew not only her piece at the Whitney but her piece at the Yankee Ingenuity Museum in Shelburne, Vermont, as well. He appreciated her work, and hence he appreciated her, Claire, in a way that few other people did. Who would have guessed? Lock Dixon was a fan. He had always made her nervous; Claire thought this was because of Daphne and the accident.

But maybe not.

Claire wondered if Lock Dixon had ever seen the inside of a hot shop. If he was willing to pay fifty thousand dollars for a piece of glass, then he must know something about the craft. Maybe he had been to Simon Pearce; there were two studios now where you could watch the guys blow out a few goblets, then go upstairs to a fancy restaurant and eat a warm goat cheese salad with candied pecans. Or maybe Lock had seen glass blown in Colonial Williamsburg or Sturbridge Village, or on a school trip to Corning. She would ask him the next time they were alone. Would they ever be alone again? Why did she care? Did she find Lock Dixon attractive? Well, he was twenty pounds overweight and balding on top, so no, he wasn’t Derek Jeter or Brad Pitt, and he wasn’t a twenty-year-old hunk, like the kid who worked for Santos Rubbish. He wasn’t as handsome as Jason (who had a washboard stomach and a thick head of blond hair). But Lock had nice eyes—and that smile. There had been something between them last night in the office—a connection, an energy—that had not been present during lunch at the yacht club or at the handful of board meetings that Claire had attended. A spark, something that caught fire and smoldered. Claire’s interest, her desire. But why? This was the kind of question Siobhan
loved:
Why this person and not that person? Why now and not before? Why did love, lust, romance, even the real, deep, and true stuff you felt for your husband, always mellow (and then, in some cases, sour)? And if the mellowing was inevitable, did that mean you simply gave up that tingling, stomach- swooping, giddy, God-I’m-in-love-or-lust feeling forever? Were you left with your hopeless crush on George Clooney or the UPS man? Siobhan could talk about this stuff for hours as she filled phyllo with lobster meat and fresh corn, but until today, these questions had never interested Claire. Until today, she couldn’t have cared less.