Back In the Game (24 page)

Chapter 56

“H
eads up!”

I ducked in my beach chair. What was flying at me now? A wild Frisbee, a kite out of control, a bocce ball accidentally lobbed too high?

“Sorry about that.”

I looked up to see a teenaged boy bending down to retrieve a large plastic ring.

“That's okay,” I said as he trotted back to his buddy. For half a second I wondered if I should point out that he was playing a beach game in the zone restricted for sunbathers, but it was far too nice a day to be grumpy.

A perfect summer day at the beach.

I looked out over the water and thought again about the last time I'd been on Ogunquit Beach, the day the water was so blue and calm, the day the pink beach ball drifted along lazily. The day I somehow knew I would be divorced from Matt.

Strange, how life works.

My meditative thoughts were interrupted by a caravan slogging past me under the awkward weight of chairs and bags and coolers and umbrellas. The caravan consisted of a balding father, an overweight mother, a moody, reluctant adolescent daughter, and a blissfully oblivious younger brother.

I smiled. Unlike seasoned beachgoers who pack their gear neatly into nifty little carts and wagons, this family looked like they had stumbled into foreign territory. I hoped they didn't mind sand in their ham and cheese sandwiches. Suddenly, the father let out a curse; seems he'd stepped on a broken shell. The daughter rolled her eyes. The mother ignored her hobbling husband's accusatory whines. The young boy dashed past them all and into the wide tide pool.

And I hoped the McFamily settled far away from me. A nasty argument was sure to erupt before long. These four people did not want to be with each other.

Just then, being alone seemed like heaven.

Still, on the drive up to Ogunquit I had experienced a brief stab of loneliness, followed by a wee bout of self-pity. I found myself imagining the assumptions people might make at the sight of an adult woman all by her lonesome.

“How sad. That poor woman must have no friends.”

“Just look at her all alone. Poor thing, she must be so lonely.”

“Mommy, why is that lady all by herself?”

“Don't stare, Timmy. She might be crazy.”

Sometimes I can be so morbidly self-centered. Well, I suppose we all have our moments.

The McFamily finally settled near another disheveled group that included a grandmother and possibly an aunt or two. Aside from an older man whose toasty skin color betrayed him as a professional sun worshipper, I was the only person in view without a companion.

But did a companion ensure companionship? No, it certainly did not.

Consider the couple with the matching beach towels. The woman was reading a big, fat paperback novel. The man was sleeping, his legs sprawled and his mouth open. He let out a ferocious snore and I felt a moment of sympathy for the woman, though she didn't so much as flinch.

Consider the couple with the bright yellow umbrella. She was listening to something—music, a talk show—on an iPod, earphones blocking the sounds of her children's whoops and cries. The man was twisting the dials of a transistor radio that must have been forty years old, that or a good reproduction of an old machine.

Consider the couple that had brought their gear in a little red wagon, or the three girls in bikinis, or the two older women in floral print one-piece bathing suits. Each of these people was talking on a cell phone.

Not one person in sight was having a conversation with the person next to them.

“Heads up!”

I ducked again. It was the same teenaged boy, retrieving the same plastic ring.

“Sorry,” he said again.

“That's okay,” I said. “Have a nice day.”

Yes, I thought, it's okay to be alone.

 

“Another round of oysters?”

I laughed and held up my hand. “God, no! A dozen is my limit.”

The bartender smiled. “I love those Malpecs, man. Can't get enough of them.”

I'd stopped into a restaurant in Perkins Cove for a light dinner before the drive back to Boston. The view from the upstairs bar was spectacular. I felt utterly relaxed, if a bit sandy.

I ordered another glass of wine and was considering the mixed berry dessert when a man in chinos and a dress shirt opened at the neck sat on the stool next to mine.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I said back.

We smiled. I liked his face. He ordered a dozen oysters and a glass of the same Pinot Grigio I was drinking.

The bartender nodded at me. “You two know each other?”

The man looked puzzled.

“We ordered the exact same thing,” I explained.

The man smiled again. “Ah, great minds and all. I'm Nick, by the way.”

I introduced myself. Nick told me he was a real estate agent with a large local group. I told him I taught sociology at Northeastern. From there, the conversation rambled along nicely.

“I really should be heading out,” I said finally. “It's about an hour and a half to Boston.”

Nick reached for his wallet. “Me, too. I've got an early showing tomorrow.” Then he turned completely in his seat so that we were face-to-face.

“I suppose we should consider each other geographically undesirable,” he said, “you living in Boston and me living in South Berwick.”

I laughed. “I've never even heard of South Berwick.”

“It's not far from here. It's south, close to the New Hampshire line.”

“Oh.”

“That means nothing to you, does it?”

“Well, I do drive through New Hampshire to get to Maine. So I know where the state line is. But beyond that . . .”

“A New Hampshire virgin. Have you ever been to Portsmouth?”

“I confess that I have not.”

“Ah,” Nick said, “here's a perfect opening for my big question! Would you be interested in getting together some time? I could show you Portsmouth, or some of southern Maine. Unless you're really opposed to dating someone from where life is the way it should be.”

I laughed. “I'm not opposed to Mainers on principle. How do you feel about Bostonians?”

“I'm neutral. You seem nice but I don't care for the mayor.”

“What about the Red Sox?” I asked.

Nick put his hand over his heart. “They're my gods.”

“Sure,” I said, keeping to myself the fact that I don't care one way or another about sports. “Let's get together some time.”

Nick walked me to my car and waved as I drove off.

Yes, I thought, it's also okay to be with someone.

Chapter 57

“T
he men here, darling, are a sorry bunch. You see that one over there, by the ice sculpture?”

Trina and I had stopped by a party being held in one of the MFA's large galleries. I wasn't really in the mood for a formal event, but Trina had enticed me with the notion of dinner afterward at a new restaurant at which it was almost impossible to get reservations. Of course, Trina, with all her connections, pulled off a table for two at nine.

“The one standing with the woman with a puff of white hair?” I asked. “I don't think I've ever seen hair that—round.”

“That's his wife,” Trina said with a little snort. “A pathetic little thing, really. Anyway, I slept with him last year. Was it in the spring or the summer? I can't remember exactly, but I do remember being bored almost to death.”

“Why?” I asked, stunned. “Why did you sleep with him? He looks old enough to be your much older father. What did you see in him?”

Trina shook her head at me as if to say, “Will this woman never learn?”

“Well?” I asked.

“He's fabulously wealthy, Nell. And looks have been known to be deceiving.” Trina sighed and looked in the direction of the cheating husband again. “Unfortunately, not in Stanley's case. Well, I might have expected it. At some point most married men lose the no doubt little sexual skill they had in the first place. Years and years of sex with the same woman dulls their instincts.”

Did it? I realized I wouldn't know. I'd never had years and years of sex with anybody, not even myself. Sex was still a largely foreign territory.

“Still,” Trina went on, “a certain few married men don't lose their capacity to please. You might consider having an affair with Dan Collins, for example. I've heard good things about his prowess in the boudoir.”

After months of knowing Trina, she still had the ability to shock me.

“I can't have an affair with a married man!” I whispered, though there was no one close enough to eavesdrop. “Especially not after what I've been through with Richard. It's so horrible to be the one cheated on. I just couldn't do to some other woman what Richard did to me.”

Trina sighed. “Yes, Nell, that's very nice of you, but you're assuming the wife cares about her husband and what he does when she's not around. There are plenty of wives in this town, in every town, who are more than happy to turn a blind eye to their husbands' infidelities. As long as he comes home eventually and continues to pay the bills, he's allowed to have his fun on the side.”

I glanced around the room. The women were well and expensively dressed. Their voices were low and modulated. No doubt they had beautiful homes and vacationed on Nantucket. But how many of these wealthy, pampered women lived lives of quiet desperation?

“I can't imagine being that sort of woman,” I said. “It sounds like such a painful and lonely life.”

A waiter glided up with a tray of champagne and we exchanged our empty glasses for full ones. When she had glided off, Trina touched her glass to mine.

“You can't imagine being that sort of woman,” she said, “because you lived with a man you loved. Don't assume all wives love their husbands. For any number of reasons they might welcome their husbands' attention otherwise directed.”

“I suppose,” I said. “It just seems so horribly sad, so wasteful. Why would a woman rather settle for a loveless marriage than look for happiness?”

Trina laughed lightly. “Dear Nell. Again you're assuming the wives of whom we speak are unhappy with their lot. One hopes—and suspects—that they are having their fun on the side, too. Take Catherine Harrington, for example. See her standing by the huge floral treatment in that appalling green dress?”

I nodded. The dress really was appalling. How had I not noticed it before?

“She's been married for almost twenty-five years and for the last five has been madly in love—and involved—with her doctor. Her husband goes his way and Catherine goes hers. She has her cake, darling Nell, and she's eating it too, passion with one man and financial stability with another. One really could be envious.”

One could be envious or one could feel slightly ill.

“The sanctity of marriage. What a joke.”

Trina drained her glass of champagne. “Marriage is what you make it,” she said. “It's not inherently good or bad. Really, I wish morality would be eliminated from the notion of marriage.”

“Then why get married in the first place,” I argued, “if there's no moral imperative to remain faithful?”

“Financial reasons, darling Nell. Companionship. Social acceptance. As marriage was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be. Human nature without end, Amen.”

“Doesn't anyone play by the rules anymore?” I asked foolishly.

“No one ever really did, darling Nell. Ah, here comes our waiter. I am parched.”

I didn't believe that, of course, that nobody had ever played by the rules. It was just Trina overstating her case again. Consider my parents. Neither had ever cheated on the other. I didn't know that for a fact—I'd never asked them such a bold question—but I knew they were faithful to each other the way I knew . . .

I took the offered glass of champagne.

The way I knew what? The way I knew that Richard was faithful to me? Until, of course, the night I learned that I knew nothing at all.

I turned to Trina. “You were married to Miles when you had sex with that old man, Stanley. Do you always have affairs while you're married?”

“Of course,” she said, as if again surprised I'd ask such a silly question. “How else am I supposed to entertain myself? How else am I supposed to find my next husband?”

Of course. Always looking to improve on the current situation. The grass is always greener.

A thought suddenly occurred to me.

“What happens if a husband cheats on you?” I asked. “What happens if he falls in love with someone and wants a divorce? What happens if he discovers you're having an affair and throws you out?”

I thought I saw a flicker of something dark, fear maybe or suspicion, cross Trina's face. I might have imagined it.

“None of those scenarios has played out yet,” she replied briskly, “but I daresay any of them are within the realm of possibility. But as long as I have a good lawyer—and I do—I'm sure I will be just fine.”

“You might be just fine, but how will you feel?” I pressed.

Now I thought I detected a flicker of annoyance dash across Trina's unlined face. “Nell, darling, I appreciate your concern, if that's what this is, but I assure you I will feel fine, too.”

“You never know how you're going to feel until you feel it,” I told her. “Trust me, Trina. Everyone underestimates or overestimates her emotional capacities. I certainly had no clue as to my own strengths and weaknesses until Richard and I divorced.”

Trina studied me for a long moment. I didn't look away. I wondered what she was seeing. Finally, she said: “There's a lot more to you, Nell, than there is to me. You're sensitive. I simply am not.”

I studied the woman I had begun to consider a friend in return. “Yes,” I said after a long moment, “I don't believe that you are.”