Mating for Life (11 page)

She also liked that he had his own life, too, and she knew he
had been satisfied with it before she came along, that although he was a widower he had never been searching for a woman to fill a hole. He had been an agriculture museum curator before he retired. He sometimes seemed to come from another era, could make her feel as though the time and therefore her life was not in fact running through her fingers but was slowing down instead. He was humble. He was self-aware. He could be funny and goofy, but he could also be brilliant. And most of all, he loved her. “Worships you, more like,” Nina had said. “I don't know how you do it, but you seem to have somehow landed yourself the last good one on the planet.”

And the biggest fault she could find with him? That he wanted to marry her.

• • •

“I need to tell the girls first, before we set a date,” she had said the night he proposed. “I can't just surprise them with wedding invitations in the mail. They don't even know about you.”

“So when are you going to tell them?”

“Our annual cottage weekend.”

“But that's months away.”

“Six weeks, not months.”

“Why can't you have them up sooner?”

“Because that's when we always do it.”

“But maybe you could start a new tradition. A cottage weekend in May.”

“The island is uninhabitable in May. All those bugs.”

He had reached for her hand and she had felt relief at his touch.

“I'm sorry. This didn't exactly go the way I planned it,” he said.

“You planned this?” This made her nervous. “It seemed so spontaneous.”

“Well, it was. It
was
spontaneous, but I'd definitely been thinking about it. A lot. And planning it. And I was going to . . . well, I didn't think getting down on one knee with a ring would be appropriate, but the next step was going to be for me to give you a ring.”

“You have a ring?”

“I have a ring.”

“Oh, please, no.” Helen had said that accidentally. “Oh, no. I'm sorry. That didn't sound right. It's just that I—”

“Don't like to wear jewelry unless it's costume. I know that. But I thought you might like this one. It's simple.” He was pulling it out of his pocket. And it
was
a pretty ring. A square diamond—the words
princess cut
had popped into Helen's mind, although she had no idea how she knew this term—with an antique scroll setting. If she had ever wanted an engagement ring, this probably would have been the one. Although at that point even if she had despised it she would have pretended to adore it.

When she put it on, the mood lightened a bit. They shared a toast to their future.

But then time passed and she began to try to think of reasons not to marry him. That was why she had misplaced the ring. She had taken it off and placed it on the shelf and forgotten about it because she had read that line in the Martha Gellhorn book about how you should never marry a man who didn't like his mother.
He never speaks of his mother,
she realized.
And when he does, it's dismissive, disparaging.
She felt guilty about it later, knew he had his reasons—and very compelling ones, at that: his mother was an alcoholic who had hit him and his sisters regularly and eventually died of liver failure. But of course by then the ring was already destined to turn up on Liane's finger.

• • •

Helen returned to the cottage from her walk. He was at the table with a notepad. She could sense that his annoyance had not dissipated.

“Who do you think you might be inviting to the wedding?” Iain asked.

“Who are
you
inviting?”

“My kids. Some friends. Forty people, probably. You?”

“Why do you need to know?” She had intended to make amends when she returned, but now she was feeling defensive again.

“I'm just wondering how many we can expect. What to budget for this.”

“I thought we agreed, something simple. And budget isn't an issue. I'll pay. Whatever you want.”

“Of course I'm not letting you pay for our wedding.” He seemed seriously affronted. “And it would help to know how many guests.”

She boiled water in the kettle, measured matcha powder, whisked it into hot water, slid a mug toward him with a bit too much force. (Green liquid that looked like pond scum spattered across the table, some onto his hand.)

“Ouch,” he said.

“I don't know who I'm inviting yet,” she said. He said nothing, and she sat, watching him and feeling the anger begin to build.

“You're only hurting yourself with all this wedding business—and why?”

“I'm sorry,
what
?”

“
And why,
I said. So you can have an official piece of paper with both of our names on it?”

“It's more than a piece of paper to me. Why are you sabotaging this?”

“I'm not sabotaging anything. I want to be with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. But . . .” She searched
for one of her reasons. “Well, here's the thing about committing to someone at our age: you actually mean it when you say you're going to spend the rest of your life with a person. The ‘in sickness and in health' part has less of a far-off-in-the-­distant-future ring to it. I just don't want to have to say it aloud and think about my own mortality.”

“That's another one of your weak excuses. And we just won't say that part. Did you really think I was going to make you recite traditional vows?”

“Maybe I did, considering you want us to
be
traditional and get married.”

“I can't change who I am, Helen.”

“And I can
?
”
Except she could see why he thought her more malleable, more changeable. She
was
. How many times had she reinvented herself over the years? But what most people didn't understand was that she had remained the same person inside. “
Marriage,
Iain. The very thing I always said I would never do for many reasons, but in part because . . . well, in part because I stood against it for so long!”

“Don't you think it's time to grow up? The era is over. Women know they have choices now. And you definitely proved you could do it, Helen. No one's going to fault you. Maybe no one will even notice.”

She tried to ignore the fact that he had hinted that she didn't matter anymore. “You think getting married is what makes you grow up?
Please!
I grew up long before I decided I was
never
going to need a man to complete me.”

He left his tea and went out to his garden.

“Your goddamn greens!” she shouted after him, and immediately wished she hadn't. Especially when he turned and shouted back at her.

“Fine, Helen, fine! If you don't want to marry me, then don't!”

And then, yet again, the ring was abandoned on a coun
tertop. Many times after, she wished she had kept it. But she didn't. She left, went back to her cottage, and wandered from room to room. Eventually she opened the guest book and ripped out the page with Edie's entry on it, the one Liane had mentioned. She crumpled it up and threw it in the garbage. She tried to calm down. She didn't succeed. So she called Johnny and had him pick her up. She left without properly closing up the cottage and gave cash to have one of his sons do it. Who knew when she'd be back? She certainly wasn't going to spend the summer on the island now. Maybe it was a place that was now forever ruined.
And all because of a man,
she thought mutinously.

6

Red Fox
(
Vulpes vulpes
)

Although red foxes will dig their own dens, they seem to prefer using dens that were made by other animals. Depressions under buildings are also favored den sites. While it is believed the red fox mates for life, pairs may separate for a few months and rejoin during the breeding season, or they might not rejoin at all.

W
hen the fox—which, it turned out, lived beneath the cottage—ate Rolf the guinea pig and the girls witnessed it, Gillian realized that she couldn't shield her girls from everything.

Afterward, when Isabel and Beatrice's sobs had slowed, when they were blanketed on the couch, huddled together watching a Disney movie—even though Isabel was thirteen and had told them she was far too old for Disney movies of any sort, which was probably true—Gillian thought perhaps she should go talk to Laurence. She hadn't had this thought in a while. She had been spending most of that summer so far trying to think of ways to
avoid
talking to him. But no. It was time. Something had to give. Somehow, the brutality of the fox had finally made her realize this.

She left the living room and walked into the kitchen. Her “husband”—she put mental quotation marks around the
word now—was facing the window, a bottle of beer in his hand. His laptop at close hand on the counter meant that he was probably planning to go and write, and this filled her with irritation. Always, the
writing
. His other wife. His mistress. And, as she did every time she thought of his writing this way, as an act of infidelity, she felt welcome self-justification.­ She had done what she had done because he had never loved her properly to begin with. Did it matter that Daniel, in general, wasn't as passionate about life as Laurence, wasn't quite as handsome, certainly wasn't as intelligent? No, it did not. Because Laurence's intelligence was useless to her. Like a cocktail party anecdote. “This is Gillian and her husband. He's a novelist.” Now the person's eyebrows would rise with interest. “His most recent book was short-listed for the Tamworth.” Eyebrows up even farther, combined with a slight turn away from her and toward Laurence. “It's about what would happen if we knew exactly when the world was going to end—but not for a hundred years.” Sometimes people simply turned their backs on Gillian at this point.
What about me?
she had often found herself thinking.
I'm a genetic researcher. One day I might save your daughter's life.
But no. That was not the sort of thing that mattered to anyone. Until they actually needed it.

“I think it's time we left the island,” Gillian said. Laurence just nodded absently and continued to look out the window. She felt herself become angry. “We as in
I'd like to take the girls with me, back to the city.
We as in
not you
. We as in
us
. I think we should all talk, and then I think the girls and I should leave.”

Now he was paying attention. “I don't want you to do that.”

“I don't think they want to stay. And I especially don't think they'll want to stay once they know.”

“Did you think about asking them what they want?”

“No. But I know them. And also, it's what
I
want.”

He ignored this. Of course he ignored this. When had he
ever cared what she wanted? “Perhaps we should ask them together—after, as you suggest, we have the talk.”

“Make them choose between us? Laurence, that's monstrous.”

He clenched his jaw and looked away again, and this show of anger, however benign, surprised her. He hadn't displayed anger since it had all started. Mostly what he had done was spend time on the end of the dock reading, or upstairs in the tiny attic studio looking at the water (this was all she ever saw him doing) and writing (this was what he said he was doing). Oh, and of course he played with the girls, went for walks and canoe rides with Isabel, tickled Bea until she shrieked with laughter, read them their bedtime stories instead of Gillian because, according to Bea, “Daddy does the voices better and he snuggles longer than you do.”

Meanwhile, Gillian, when the girls were otherwise occupied (with Laurence, or with television, or, in Isabel's case, with her computer or phone), wandered up and down the property line trying to get a cellular signal so she could return Daniel's numerous texts.

“This was not how this summer was supposed to go,” Gillian said.

“And how was it
supposed
to go?” he asked through teeth still clenched.

She rolled her eyes. “
You
tell
me
! This was your idea, renting this place!”

Now he unclenched and spoke quietly, ever mindful of the girls in a way that to her felt self-righteous. Another reason to be angry with him instead of at herself. “I rented it before I knew . . . about . . .” He could never say it, though. “And it was
your
idea to visit with the girls on weekends. Listen, Gill, I'm not saying we make the girls choose between us, but yes, it's time to tell them, and we need to do it together, and we need to make them feel like they have at least some control over
what's going to happen to them next—Isabel, anyway. Bea probably won't understand.” He sighed and stepped back. She hadn't realized he'd been advancing. “After what happened with that damned fox, if you want to take them back to the city, you can, but they
are
coming back next weekend and the weekend after that. I can just come get them myself, if that's what you need.”

“So you've thought about it. Me leaving.” It sounded like an accusation, and she realized it was.
We agreed to this.

“Yes. I've thought about it. I've thought about it a lot. I think about it all the time, in fact. What do you think, Gill, that I like living a lie from Friday to Monday, that I don't care at all?”

“You
act
like you don't care. Most of the time you act like this isn't even real. Like, for example, when you accepted that neighbor's, that
Ilsa's,
dinner invitation, as though it would even be possible or
probable
for us to go into the home of strangers and pretend that everything was normal!”

“I told you, I didn't know what to say, and didn't want to explain it all to a stranger, so I just . . . said yes.” But his face had started to color. “Besides, it didn't happen, remember? She canceled, said something had come up and that she and her sister had to leave the island.”

“
They
canceled.
You
would have gone through with it.”

“When you come here, you walk around acting all wounded and pious. Do you actually think I don't know what you're doing, wandering around outside at all hours trying to get a cell phone signal so you can text
him
and tell him how bored you are? How horrible it is to be stuck on this island with your ‘husband'?” She winced. He tipped his beer bottle back and emptied it of its contents, then opened the fridge and took out another one.

This was new. He had hardly been drinking at all, almost never joining her in a glass of wine before or during dinner.
She had thought perhaps this was because he hadn't wanted to share anything resembling festivity with her. But maybe he simply hadn't wanted to be even slightly the way he was now: out of control. She knew it wasn't for her that he hadn't wanted to be this way, but for the girls. Except now that the girls were off balance because of the incident with the fox and that stupid and pathetic guinea pig that had been all her idea, and she wasn't even quite certain the girls liked particularly, he was allowing himself to fall apart a little, too.

He swallowed more beer. “I don't want to upset the girls, either, but it's going to happen eventually.”

I know that!
she wanted to shout.
That's exactly what I was thinking!
But instead she opened the fridge, took out a bottle of white wine, and poured a glass.

He turned away from her and walked toward the sliding doors, presumably to go and sit on the end of the dock again, either a laptop or a book holding all his attention.

“This is your fault, too!” she shouted after him, not caring anymore what the girls heard or did not hear. But he didn't turn, or even flinch. He just kept walking away.

• • •

Laurence and Gill met when she was in the midst of her postgraduate degree in medical genetics at Oxford. Her roommate, Louise, had been dating an English major from Toronto and he had come to visit for a week with a friend. “He's a writer,” Louise had said. “Apparently he wants nothing more than to visit the Reading Room in the British Museum Great Court. Will you take him?”

She still remembered that he had been wearing a blue button-down shirt and khaki pants the first time she met him—although, at the time, how could she have known that this would turn out to be his uniform, that the very things that had attracted her to him in the first place (his casual way of
dressing, his constant five o'clock shadow, the way sometimes, when a story wasn't going well, she would notice that some of his nails had been bitten down) would eventually repulse her?

Back then, however, when he decided to stay in London, to be with her and write for a while, she would take those sore-looking fingers in her own, kiss them, and say, “It will work itself out; it always does. This block won't last for long,” and he would smile and start to undress her and call her his muse.

This had happened a lot during their heady first days together. Whether he legitimately needed a muse or did not, he would end up undressing her frequently. They had been together only five months when she discovered she was pregnant. Her secret: There was a small part of her, a very quiet part, that had insinuated the following:
This wasn't supposed to be forever. You weren't going to marry a
writer
.

When she told him about her pregnancy, he didn't react (later, this habit of his, too, would annoy her) but instead watched her face and waited to see what she would say next. “I want to keep the baby,” she said, expecting her voice to sound more halting than it had. Instead, she had sounded very sure, and very grown-up—which had made her realize she officially
was
grown-up. This was an idea that did not immediately sit well with her, despite the fact that she had almost always been called “mature for your age.” “I just don't think I can—” she continued, but he put his hand on her forearm and said, “You don't have to explain.”

It was different after that. She no longer felt like his muse. Her stomach distended and she hated it. He said she was gorgeous. An earth mother. Later,
arabesque
. She began to have strange dreams about leading a different life, about being in the pages of one of those Choose Your Own Adventure
novels that had made her feel so uncomfortable as a child (Was
it really okay to choose your own book ending? Perhaps this was why she had never been able to identify with Laurence's need to write books) and simply deciding to go down another path that did not include Laurence. Then she'd wake up and realize she didn't have a choice.

Isabel arrived. Laurence was a perfect father, but Gillian suffered from what she realized now was postpartum depression. It took her months to connect with her daughter. She said that nursing hurt, but it didn't. It was just that the close contact made her uncomfortable in the same way getting massages or facials at spas did. When she had tried to explain this to Laurence, he was incredulous. “But this is your
child,
” he had said. “You should be on my side!” she had shouted, and he had put his hand on her arm. “Please. Don't shout. There aren't sides here. We're all on the same team now. Me, you, and Iz.” His private little name for her.

She had eventually come out of the depression, but the feeling of being the “other” in the family had never dissipated, not even years later, when she decided they should have Beatrice in an attempt to grow their family unit to a size that would be big enough to include her, too. This had failed, of course. A child can't save a marriage. Gillian should have known this. And poor Beatrice. She was a colicky baby and still cried more often than not, as though she knew the weight of the future of her parents' marriage had always rested on shoulders too small to bear the load.

• • •

Daniel was a scientist. They met on an advisory panel. She had not immediately liked him. But when he asked her, later, if she had, she said, “Of course I did. I couldn't stop watching you.”

Jasmine, the divorce lawyer, had explained to Gill that it would take nearly a year for the divorce to be finalized. She
was okay with the wait, but it made Daniel, who had already separated from his wife when they began their affair in earnest, edgy. It was as though he expected her to change her mind.

It was difficult for her to explain to Daniel why she wanted him—and she didn't want to tell him that the very reasons she wanted him were so opposite from the reasons she had wanted Laurence (or that maybe it was
because
he was the opposite of Laurence that she wanted him at all). So she just told him that it was difficult but that she was working on it, trying her best, that she loved him, of course she did, for reasons that she found challenging to explain simply because she was so logically minded. This placated him. He liked it when she mentioned logic, especially in relation to her own mind. (There: a reason. Because he appreciated logic and especially hers. And also, secretly, because his achievements were never going to outshine her own.)

She pushed Daniel from her mind and peeked in at the girls. Beatrice was still watching the movie. Isabel was tapping away at her iPhone, holding it up, searching for a signal the way her errant mother so often did. Gill forced herself to smile. Then she returned to the kitchen to make a salad and take out the fish she intended to parcel in foil and grill for dinner. Later: “Go get your father for dinner,” she instructed Isabel. And Isabel did, and Laurence, her “husband,” entered the cottage, did not drink any more beer, declined her offer of wine during the meal, chatted and laughed with the girls, and also offered to hold a special memorial service for Rolf the next day. The talk didn't happen. She avoided looking at Laurence and could tell he was avoiding looking at her, too.