Jennifer Haigh (2 page)

Paulette had known Anne most of her life. Roy had met her his final year at Harvard, when Paulette was fourteen, and she had fallen in love with Anne too. They were as close as sisters—closer, certainly, than Paulette and Martine. Paulette admired her sister, but couldn't confide in her. Martine seemed to find the world so easy. She had no patience for someone who did not.

Anne lit a cigarette. After giving birth to her second daughter, she'd taken up smoking to regain her figure. Charlotte was twelve now, and Anne, so thin her ribs showed, still smoked.

They watched as Martine joined the boys in the surf. In the ocean she was a daredevil. Paulette got nervous just watching her.

Martine waiting for her moment, her slick head bobbing; Martine diving fearlessly into the waves.

"You can relax now," Anne said, chuckling. "Auntie Lifeguard is on duty."

"That's the problem. She'll get them all killed." Paulette shifted slightly, to avoid the streaming smoke."When is Roy coming?"

"Friday morning. He's dying to put the boat in the water."Anne rolled onto her stomach, then untied her bikini top. "Can you grease my back?"

Paulette took the baby oil Anne offered and squirted it into her hands. Anne's skin felt hot and papery, dry to the touch.

"I don't know if Frank will make it this year," said Paulette.
I don't know if I want him to
, she nearly added. At home they coexisted peacefully, more or less, though Frank spent so much time at the lab that they rarely saw each other. At the Cape they'd have to spend long days together.
What will we talk about all day?
she wondered.
What on
earth will we
do?

She knew what Frank would want to do. His sexual demands overwhelmed her. If he'd asked less often, she might have felt bad about refusing; but if Frank had his way, they would make love every night. After fifteen years of marriage, it seemed excessive. Paulette sometimes wondered whether other couples did it so often, but she had no one to ask. Anne didn't shrink from personal questions, but she was Roy's wife. Certain things, Paulette truly didn't want to know.

Married sex: the familiar circuit of words and caresses and sensations, shuffled perhaps, but in the end always the same. The repetition wore on her. Each night when Frank reached for her she felt a hot flicker of irritation, then tamped it down. She willed herself to welcome him, to forget every hurt and disappointment, to hold herself open to all he was and wasn't. The effort exhausted her.

Years later she would remember those marital nights with tenderness: for the brave young man Frank had been, and for her young self, the wounded and stubborn girl. She'd had a certain idea about lovemaking, gleaned from Hollywood or God knew where, that a man's desire should be specific to her, triggered by her unique face or voice or—better—some intangible quality of her spirit; and that of all the women in the world, only she should be able to arouse him. And there lay the problem. Frank's passion, persistent and inexhaustible, seemed to have little to do with her. He came home from work bursting with it, though they hadn't seen or spoken to each other in many hours."I've been thinking about this all day
,
" he sometimes whispered as he moved inside her.

This.

That one little word had the power to freeze her. Not, "I've been thinking about
you.
" But, "I've been thinking about
this."

It would seem comical later, how deeply this upset her. Like so many of her quarrels with Frank, it seemed ridiculous in hindsight.

Once, early on, she had tried to explain it to Anne:
Frank loves sex. If he hadn't married me
,
he'd be having sex with someone else.

So?
Anne said.

For me it's different,
Paulette insisted.
I love Frank. If I hadn't met him, I never would have had sex with anyone.

It wasn't true, of course, but she wanted it to be. Her ideas were fixed, impossibly idealistic: Frank was the only man she could possibly have loved. Later this would seem a childish notion, but times had been different then. Paulette, her best friend, Tricia Boone, her closest girlfriends at Wellesley—all had thought, or pretended to think, this way.

Frank, meanwhile, did not share in this illusion. She knew that he looked at other women. A certain type attracted him, large breasted and voluptuous, a figure nothing like hers. When they went out together, to the symphony or the theater, Paulette found herself scanning the crowd, looking for the women he'd be drawn to. She was nearly always right; Frank proved it by ogling them right under her nose. He'd ruined her birthday dinner by flirting shamelessly with the waitress. That night, at home—she declined the hotel suite—he was surprised when she wouldn't let him touch her.
What's the matter?
he asked, genuinely mystified.
Didn't we have a good time?
She could have told him ( but didn't) that he'd made her feel invisible. By then she didn't want to talk to him. She didn't want him anywhere near her.

They were apart twelve hours a day, six days a week. In that time, how many nubile young students did he imagine undressing? When, in a weak moment, she'd admitted her concerns, Frank had merely laughed.
Honey, there
are
no pretty girls. It's MIT.

This was not the answer she'd hoped for.

Recently her worries had grown sharper. The department had hired a new secretary. Now, when Paulette called Frank at work, a young female voice answered the phone. Paulette had done research: the secretary, Betsy Baird, was blond and attractive. Was it her presence that fired Frank's libido?

I've been thinking about this all day.

"Here are the girls," Anne said. Gwen and her cousins, Mimi and Charlotte, had come in a separate car. Sixteen that spring, Mimi had insisted on driving, proud of her new license.

The three girls trekked down the beach, towels draping their shoulders. Mimi led the way—tall and coltish, with her father's dark eyes and patrician nose. Charlotte, blond and freckled, resembled her mother. Gwen brought up the rear, her little legs scrambling. She was the same age as Charlotte, but a head shorter. Next to her cousins she looked tiny as a doll.

Paulette watched them. "Charlotte certainly shot up this year," she observed.

"Yes, she did." Anne turned over onto her back."It's done wonders for her tennis game. I think she takes after Aunt Martine."

The girls laid their towels high on the dunes, away from their mothers. The breeze carried their laughter as they stripped down to swimsuits. Mimi wore a triangle bikini similar to her mother's; but on her the effect was different. The rear triangle scarcely covered her rounded bottom. Her breasts, high and firm, peeked out the sides of the top.

"My daughter," Anne said, laughing, as though she'd read Paulette's mind. "Roy's going to have a heart attack when he sees that bikini. If he had it his way, he'd never let her out of the house."

Paulette watched her niece in wonderment. Mimi was the first infant she'd ever held. In college then, she was overwhelmed by a feeling she couldn't name. She'd loved everything about Mimi—her baby smell, the dense, rounded weight of her. Holding her, Paulette felt a knot low in her belly, an ache between her legs. The feeling was nearly sexual, shocking in its intensity:
I want this. I want one.

She had adored her niece for sixteen years. Now she was reluctant to look at the girl. Mimi with everything ahead of her—love, discovery, every gift and possibility. Mimi's happiness lay in the future; Paulette's, in the past. She was stunned by her own meanness.
I love this child
, she reminded herself. How ungenerous, how unseemly and futile to long for what was past.

Anne lit another cigarette. "It's awful. I have this beautiful daughter, and my whole body is sagging by the minute. I feel like a shriveled old hag."

(Years later Paulette would marvel at the memory: how old they'd felt at thirty-five, how finished and depleted.
We were still young and beautiful
, she would realize far too late.)

"So don't I," she agreed. "I'm not ready. I don't want Gwen to grow up, not ever."

Anne chuckled. "I wouldn't start worrying yet. It looks like she has a long way to go."

They watched as Gwen charged into the surf. She wore a red tank suit with a pert ruffle around the hips. Her chest was perfectly flat, her belly rounded like a little girl's.

Anne frowned."She's twelve, right? Same as Charlotte?"

"Older, actually. She'll be thirteen in September."

For a long time Anne was silent.

"Funny," she said finally, "how these things work."

That night they grilled hamburgers on the porch. Paulette squelched a wave of panic as Martine showed Billy how to light the charcoal. "Relax, will you?" said Martine. "He's a big boy. He'll do fine."

"You're right, of course. Frank is always telling me not to hover."

Paulette said this lightly, hiding her irritation. How like Martine to instruct her on child rearing, an expert despite having no children of her own.

She spread a checkered cloth over the picnic table. This was her favorite part of the summer, these long, manless evenings. The children amused each other, leaving her free to drink wine with Anne and Martine. Had Frank and Roy been there—holding court on the patio, talking past each other, airing their opinions about nothing too interesting—the women would have retreated to the stuffy kitchen.

They'd have turned the dinner into more work than was necessary, simply to have something to do.

That year Mimi had taken over the kitchen, mixing the salad, husking ears of corn. Watching her—fully dressed now—hand the platters to Billy, Paulette remembered the triangle bikini, the miserable wash of envy she'd felt. The feeling had dissipated completely.

As if sensing this, Mimi flashed her a shy smile, filling her with tenderness.

"What a helpful daughter you have," she told Anne.

"Billy's a good influence. Trust me, she never does this at home."

In that moment, warmed by the wine, Paulette was proud of the children they'd raised. In the fall Billy would go away to Pearse; in a few years he would bring home girlfriends, pretty girls like Mimi.

He would fall in love. Watching him, she was struck by all that was delightful about this. Falling in love with Frank was the most thrilling thing that had ever happened to her. It seemed tragic to experience this just once, at the age of nineteen, and never again. Raising her children would give her a second chance at living those best years. A second and third and fourth chance.

"It's all so exciting," she told Anne, so moved she could barely speak. "The children growing up. It's a wonderful time." For years the summers had blended into each other, each much like the last.

But now every summer would bring new developments. Mimi, then Billy, starting college, getting married, having children of their own.

Of course there was sadness, the depressing reality of aging. (Anne:
I feel like a shriveled old hag.)
But Paulette refused to feel as Anne did. She had been the pretty one in her family, a distinction she'd enjoyed her whole life. Now she would cede the title gracefully. Watching Mimi clear the table, she was proud of her own generosity.

Good for you, sweetheart
, she thought.
It's your turn.

Inside the house, the telephone rang, a shrill intrusion. The distant world seemed perfectly irrelevant. Everyone she needed was right here, close enough to touch.

"Paulette," Martine called through the open window."Frank's on the phone."

"Daddy!" Scott cried."I want to talk to Daddy!"

"In a minute," Paulette said, rising."Let Mother talk to him first."

She hurried into the kitchen. The house's only telephone, a rotary model heavy as a bowling ball, sat on the counter. "Frank?" She drained the wine from her glass. "Is everything all right?"

"Hi." He sounded rushed, agitated."Listen, I only have a minute, but I wanted to tell you. I think I can get down there this weekend."

She heard the clack of a typewriter. Frank was always doing two things at once.

Are you there alone?
she wanted to ask.

"What are you typing?" she said instead.

Mimi came into the kitchen then, loaded down with dishes.
Excuse me
, she mouthed. She placed the salad bowl in the sink.

"More revisions on the paper. Sorry. I need to get this thing out the door."

Mimi bent over to scrape the plates into the trash. Paulette stared at her suntanned legs. The denim shorts—she hadn't noticed, until then, quite how short they were—rode up dramatically, revealing the bottom crease of her buttocks. For a moment Paulette saw the girl as Frank would see her. She felt her throat tighten.

"Are you still there?" Frank asked."I'll try to make it down there on Friday. It won't be easy, but I think I can swing it."

No.
Paulette felt again the wave of sickness she'd felt watching Mimi at the beach, sour and corrosive, sharp as glass. Her family, summer at the Cape, her love for this dear girl: these were precious things, and fragile. Too delicate to be placed in Frank's careless hands.