An Act of Love (38 page)

There was only one other woman in the class, a rather flabby older woman who seemed as determined as Emily to learn this martial art. The few times Emily had had her as a partner, Emily had been vividly aware of the woman’s femininity, how her wrist was softer, plumper, her movements more supple and languorous, and less precise. The woman was gentler, almost apologetic, and Emily supposed that was the way she was, too. They were not good partners for each other.

It was the best for her when she practiced with one of the green belt men who knew more, whose movements were quicker, smoother. It was frightening for Emily to
work with a man. Each time it was frightening, as the man stood before her, always taller, always heavier, sometimes somber and intense, sometimes insulted and bored by a woman partner, sometimes amused. But male.

Run, her body told her.

Stay, her mind told her body. Stay. And learn.

Chapter Twenty-nine

In a small town
off the Mass Pike, almost exactly halfway between Ebradour and Basingstoke, a colonial mansion had been turned into a small guest house named The Bayberry Inn. On this cold February night the lounge did smell of bayberry, and of cinnamon-scented candles and apple wood crackling in the fireplace.

Linda was curled up on a deep sofa, staring at the fire. She had arrived early because the weather forecasters predicted snow and she hated driving in snow. Owen would be there soon.

Until then, it was balm for her soul simply to sit in this luxurious room. This peaceful room. With each passing second she was thankful that Owen had suggested they come here. It was expensive, but they had decided such an indulgence was necessary. Once a month, dinner here, the night here, time together away from their busy homes. Time away from their work, professional and familial. Time away from their children.

“Been waiting long?”

She looked up, and saw her husband standing there. He’d lost weight recently and his blazer hung on him, and the collar of his button-down shirt was loose. Still he was breathtakingly handsome, and just for a moment all the delicious electricity of their early meetings broke over her, flooding her with desire and with delight, because this man was hers.

“Not long,” she said. “How was the drive?”

“All right.” He sank onto the sofa next to her. “Have you seen the suite?”

“Yes. It’s wonderful. A four-poster bed. Wood-burning fireplace.
And
a clean, modern bath.”

“The best of both worlds.”

“Yes.”

“You look good.”

“Thanks.” She was glad he noticed. She’d lost weight, too, an accidental consequence of the recent events in their lives, and for tonight had bought a dress that showed off her figure. Owen liked to see her in a dress; how long had it been? She lived
in jeans and sweaters and boots or fleece-lined moccasins.

For tonight she’d had her hair cut and shaped. Her hairdresser had suggested tinting it. “Goodness!” Maxie’d exclaimed. “Look at all the gray!”

“Leave it,” Linda said. “It’s my badge of courage.”

“What?” Maxie asked, puzzled. “Honey, it makes you look old.”

“Never mind,” Linda said, then to placate the other woman, “I’ll think about dyeing it.”

“Darling, we don’t dye. We cellophane. We color.”

“Fine, but not today.”

Owen, she noticed, had more gray in his hair, too. And the skin on his face had begun to hang down from the bones, just slightly, but enough. The curved lines between his nose and mouth were more deeply engraved, and when he was in repose, as he was now, staring at the fire, the sides of his mouth turned down. They did not use to do that.

“I brought a bottle of champagne,” Owen said.

“Lovely! What kind?”

“Perrier Jouët.”

“You’re kidding.”

“We can afford it once a year. We deserve it this year.”

They had spent New Year’s Eve separately, at home with their children. Linda nodded ruefully. “When shall we drink it?”

“Well—how soon do you want to eat?”

It was lovely to discuss such inconsequential matters. For the first time in weeks they could think only of themselves and their immediate pleasure.

Bruce had been invited to spend the night with a bunch of guys, Ebradour friends he’d known since he was a child. He and Owen had discussed this with Dr. Ingersall; the host parents—and all of Ebradour as well—knew that Bruce had left private school, but nothing more, and Dr. Ingersall thought there was no reason to tell them. Bruce was taking low doses of Depo-Provera; he was working hard in school; he spent all his spare time in the barn, refinishing furniture; he saw Dr. Ingersall twice a week. At home he was sullen but placid. Tonight he and the other boys would watch videos and eat pizza. The parents would be around the entire time; it seemed a safe enough bet.

It would be the first time Bruce had spent away from his father since the night he was jailed.

Emily had also been invited to spend the night, with a new friend from the Basingstoke public high school. Bridgett was a somber girl, with braces and glasses and her hair in braids. She was seemingly uninterested in boys, which was probably one of the reasons Emily liked being around her. Bridgett wanted to be a journalist when she grew up and her conversation was packed with information about injustices, especially against women.

Linda had driven Bridgett home several times, and met Bridgett’s parents, both college professors, serious intellectuals, strict disciplinarians. She found them rather dumpy and overearnest, and she could tell they found her, a novelist separated from her second husband, a wee bit alarming, but all in all they had passed each other’s inspections.

The important thing was that Bridgett was Emily’s friend. Now and then Emily met Cordelia and Zodiac and Ming Chu in town for ice cream and coffee. But the other three girls were always engrossed with Hedden gossip; Emily felt left out. She
was
left out. She was in a different world now, but doing all right, Linda thought.

Emily saw her therapist once a week. Sometimes she voluntarily told Linda about her session; other times she’d simply shrug off Linda’s queries. “We just talked about life and stuff. Nothing exciting.” It was the therapist who’d advised Emily to take a course in self-defense, and that, more than anything else, seemed to be imbuing Emily with a stronger sense of self. A kind of grace was slipping into Emily’s bones, a slight ease in her posture, her chin held a little higher, her shoulders straighter.

The truth was, Linda had to face it, Emily really loved living in Basingstoke. On the farm she had missed the daily serendipitous exchanges with people; Emily liked being around people. She had begun to baby-sit for a family who lived in the condominium. Eleven-month-old Greg was a picture-book baby, with wisps of white-blond hair and huge blue eyes and fat rosy cheeks and very fat thighs, and he was a cheerful baby, too. When he saw Emily come in the door, he squealed and bubbled with glee and waved his arms for her to pick him up. She carried him with her everywhere, and took great pains to keep him perfectly clean, and never let him cry for more than a millisecond. As Emily joked to her mother, he was one nonthreatening male.

Owen knew all this, just as Linda knew how Bruce was doing. They talked to each other on the phone every night, just before they went to sleep. They talked about their children, and they talked about other things, too, their work, the farm, their friends.

Linda was scheduled to attend a joint family session with Dr. Ingersall once a month. At some point in the future Emily would be invited to join them for a session. Bruce needed to apologize to Emily, Dr. Ingersall said, if their relationship was to continue at all. It would be healthy for both of them to confront each other again, he said. But Bruce wasn’t quite ready for that yet. Probably Emily wasn’t, either.

Tonight, Linda and Owen had agreed in advance, they would not discuss their children. Life did hold other elements. They had not been attracted to each other because of their children nor had they married for that reason. Their lives would go on when the children were grown.

“Let’s go to our room,” Owen said now. “I have something for you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Linda responded archly.

Owen grinned. “That, too, but not till after dinner.”

They went up the winding staircase and down the hall to their suite. Linda put a match to the kindling while Owen popped the cork on the champagne. They settled into the small armchairs in front of the fireplace and toasted each other, and then Owen reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper and handed it to Linda.

Linda looked at it. It was a check, for one hundred thousand dollars, made out to her.

“Owen?”

“I sold the south woodland.”

“Owen, no.”

“You know the Huntingtons have been pressuring me to sell it to them for months now. When Bruce was arrested, I knew I’d need money for a lawyer, so I called them and did it. Now that we don’t need a lawyer, I want to give the money to you.”

“Won’t you need it for Bruce’s therapy?”

“I’ve kept enough from the sale of the land for that and other expenses: medication, an old pickup for Bruce when he gets his driver’s license. But this is for you. I want you to buy a house in Basingstoke. That should be a good hefty down payment on something, something small but nice.”

“I don’t know what to say.”

“I’ve been thinking a lot about us, the future, the next few years. Emily has two and a half years of high school left. She’ll probably want to stay in Basingstoke, right?”

“I’m sure of it. She’s moved enough; she won’t want to leave Basingstoke. Her
old friends are there, her new ones. Her therapist.”

“And God knows how long Bruce is going to be living with me. I hope next year he can live at home and attend U. Mass in Amherst. I really can’t predict what will happen with him. But whatever happens, I am still your husband. You are still my wife. You’ve got to have some kind of life, something better than that dinky apartment.”

“I do hate paying rent instead of putting it into a mortgage.”

“Right. If you come back to the farm to live … 
when
you come back to the farm to live, you can sell whatever house you buy, and we can use that money to do the work you’ve always wanted to do on the farm. Until then, well, you’ll have a decent place to live.”

“Owen, this is so generous of you. I don’t know what to say, except thank you. And honestly, I’ll be so glad to leave that apartment.” She looked down at the check, and then with a sigh she looked up at her husband. “But perhaps you should save this money. In case … in case Bruce needs a lawyer in the future.”

“I’ve thought of that. I can’t live my life that way. I don’t want
us
to live
our
lives that way. It’s hard enough that we’re living apart. We’ll probably live apart for three or four years. At least. That’s enough. We are doing enough for our children, living apart this way, so that we can be good parents to them. We need to think of ourselves as well. We need to have some quality of life or we’ll become such miserable cranks everyone will suffer.”

Linda nodded. “That’s true.” Leaning over, she held out her glass. “Well, then, let’s drink to my new home. Our new lives.”

Owen touched his glass against hers, and they drank.

“Now tell me,” he said, “have you read any good books lately?”

She loved him utterly. She wanted to weep with joy and sympathy, but she rallied and said, “Actually, yes …”

They talked about books and movies and music and videos, all the pleasures of the world they’d foregone over the past few weeks. Their conversation carried them down to the dining room for a delicious meal of grilled salmon and the celebratory richness of cherries jubilee. They talked about their own work, too, and Linda told Owen about a section in her book she was stuck on, and he discussed it with her, helping her turn it over and over, like a crystal ball into which they both could see, and gradually what she needed to do with the book became clear. They had always talked to each other
like this, and it was bliss to talk this way again. As they looked at each other, they saw it was still there, after all they had gone through. It was still there, the love, the admiration, the understanding. The desire.

We are still married
, Linda thought. There were so many different ways to be married. Women in earlier times took separation from their husbands in their stride. When men went off to war. When men went off to try to make their fortunes, in the gold rush, at sea. Marriage was not defined by location; a marriage did not arise from the fact of two people living in the same house. It was more complex than that, and more elementary. Linda and Owen were not living together, and would not for years, but they were still together in every way that mattered, and that was what counted. That was the bedrock of their lives. Emily, watching, would come to understand this. Would come to appreciate it, to learn how to make a marriage herself. And perhaps in his own time, in his own way, Bruce would, too.

They went into their bedroom. The fire had burned down and only a few embers glowed, fiercely orange amid the ashes, but that was enough, that provided sufficient light. They undressed each other. They held each other, standing together, naked flesh against naked flesh, all up and down, thighs touching, chests touching, lips touching, warm breath and warm breath mingling, their souls mingling, so that they seemed enclosed within a translucent cocoon of desire and possession.

Their bedcovers had been turned back. The room was warm, luxuriously so as the cold winter wind rattled against the windows. They lay in the bed together. They did not speak, except to say endearments. The lives waiting for them, the difficult lives they would return to the next day, were as much a part of this night as the wind outside the window, but for now they could forget all that, let it wait for them, held apart from them, while they focused on each other, and on what had brought them together and would keep them together, growing richer and more profound with each burdened day of each new year; Owen’s body, Linda’s body, brought together in an act of love.