Morning (3 page)

The group was already there, laughing, at several tables they had pushed together; Sara eyed them with nervous uncertainty.

“Hi, Sara!” Carole Clark called. “Sit here!” She beckoned, indicating a chair between her and Steve.

As Sara squeezed into place, Steve pulled her to him. “Hi, babe,” he said, nuzzling her ear. His skin was silk over steel; he was as strong as a lumberjack but he looked like a lawyer with his thick blond hair and perfectly regular features.

“Ahh, don’t give me that crap, he’s a scumbag!” Mick roared from across the table, and Steve released Sara and turned back to a discussion of a local real estate agent.

Sara ordered a glass of white wine, then settled back to watch and listen, trying to keep a smile on her face. At least, she thought, relaxing, at least,
thank
God, The Virgin wasn’t here tonight.

The Virgin was Sara’s secret nickname for Mary Bennett, a woman Sara’s age who had been Steve’s serious girlfriend for years. They had broken up just a few months before Steve and Sara met. Now Steve was married to Sara and Mary was married to Bill Bennett, but Mary never let a meeting pass by without referring in as many ways as possible to the old days when she and Steve were lovers.

“Remember—he was that guy who sang folk songs at the beach party at Cisco?” she would say to Steve. “That party where we slipped off and—” Mary would stop talking and just grin.

“Oh, yeah, I remember that guy,” Steve would say, not returning Mary’s conspirator’s smile.

Or, “Steve, where did you get those turquoise-and-silver earrings you gave me for Christmas a while ago?” she would ask, right in front of Sara and Mary’s husband, Bill.

Steve, embarrassed, uncomfortable, and aware of Sara’s feelings about Mary, would mutter, “Oh, I don’t remember, Mary. That was so long ago.”

“Not
so
long ago,” she would say with a smug smile.

The first few months Sara had lived on the island, Mary had been openly, if sneakily, hostile to her. If they passed each other on the street, Mary would look the other way, or, if Sara spoke first, Mary would only look at her, unspeaking, sometimes with contemptuous surprise on her face as if she were thinking “Who is this dreadful person and why is she talking to me?”—sometimes with simple blank dislike. She had pretended for a long time not to remember Sara’s name: “Hi, Shari,” or “Hi, Susie,” she would say when she found it necessary to acknowledge Sara’s presence.

In defense, Sara came up with a nickname of her own for Mary: The Virgin, because even when taunting Sara, wide-eyed Mary looked and acted as pure and perfect and maternal and loving as a saint. Mary had the sweetest face on earth, heart shaped,
with a pointed chin and huge soft brown cow eyes. She had lots of long curling brown hair that framed her face and feathered around her head and shoulders like a halo. She spoke in a high, breathy, little-girl’s voice with never a hint of harshness or sarcasm, so that her question, “It
is
Susie, isn’t it?” seemed as innocent as an angel’s.

Everyone else seemed to adore Mary. Four years ago, when Steve and Sara were living together in Boston, Mary had married Bill Bennett, a tall handsome angry man who wanted to be a novelist. Mary devoted her life to helping him; she supported them entirely by running a day-care center in her home. It was no wonder everyone adored her; she took care of everyone’s children with love and tenderness and sympathy and everlasting patience. “Mary’s just incredible,” people were constantly saying. “I don’t know how I’d live without her.”

Sara wondered if no one else noticed that Mary, in spite of her goody-goody act and her sweet childish nature and great rolling cow eyes, wore the most revealing clothes of any woman on the island. Pretending to poverty (Steve had told Sara there was money in Mary’s family), Mary wore nothing but jeans and T-shirts or turtlenecks or sweaters. She never wore a bra, and every sweater or top she ever wore was so tight on her that her breasts and nipples were outlined with great clarity. She might as well have worn a shirt with “Hey! Look! Great breasts!” and arrows pointing which way to look. Her jeans were always skintight. She had two children, one three, one almost two, and until recently she had nursed the baby, pulling up her shirt in front of anyone and everyone, exposing her large full breasts. Once Sara had noticed Steve watching Mary nurse; she had then looked at Mary and, startled, had received a look from her that was full of smugness and scorn. “I was his first love, he’ll always be fascinated by me,” Mary seemed to say with every glance at Sara.

It had been later that night, back at home, only a few months ago, when Sara had lost her temper and stormed at Steve, “I hate her! I hate being around her!” Steve had pulled into himself as he often did when she was upset. He was calm and hated fights. (One evening Sara had yelled at him, “Oh, you drive me crazy—you’re so—so
blond
!” “But Sara,” Steve had replied, baffled, “you’re blond, too.” That was true, but Sara felt that she was blond like Charo, every now and then erupting into a tumult of shaking ruffles, screeching so wildly in her passions that she cruised right through her anger into a foreign language—at times she was sure it must seem that way to Steve.) As their marriage unfolded, she had tried to be more reasonable in her angers, but that night Sara
had been driven past reason.

“I saw you looking at Mary’s breasts. God, can’t you understand how hard it is for me to live here with you, with you looking at your old lover’s breasts? How would you like it if I sat around with David Larkin looking at my breasts!”

“She was nursing a baby,” Steve had sighed.

“That’s beside the point!” Sara had cried, lying. For of course it hadn’t been beside the point at all: there Sara was, starting her period after seven months of trying to get pregnant, and there Mary was, Steve’s old girlfriend, nursing her
second
child. If Steve had married Mary, he would have children by now. Surely that thought had occurred to him, although he would never be so unkind as to speak it aloud.

“The point is,” Sara had gone on, “that you are living here with your old friends, seeing your old lover all the time,
looking
at her, talking with her about old times. And Christ, she’s always kissing you!”

“She’s always kissing everyone,” Steve said. “That’s just the way she is.”

“Oh, you know what I mean, Steve. She’s always acting like the two of you share some big secret.”

“I know what you mean,” Steve had said, weary, “but I think you’re exaggerating it. Mary’s just one of those super-friendly people. I don’t love her anymore, Sara. I love you. And she’s not interested in me, she’s married to Bill, they’ve got kids, she’s working her ass off to support the family so he can write. Don’t get paranoid.”

“Oh, right.
Paranoid
,” Sara had sniffed, going cold and sarcastic. “Mary’s perfect, just friendly, and
I’m
paranoid.”

“Well, you are,” Steve said. “You know I don’t care a thing about her.”

“I just wish David lived here, I just wish I ran into my old lover every single damned day of the year, I wish he were kissing me every time we saw each other—then we’d see about paranoia.”

“Look, what can I do?” Steve had asked unhappily. “She and Bill are part of the group. They’re friends with everyone I’m friends with. I can’t avoid them.”

“No,” Sara had agreed. “So for the rest of my life I’ve got to live with the knowledge that you’ll be seeing your first love all the time—and God knows how many times you run into her when you’re off by yourself.”

“Oh, Sara—”

“Oh, Sara nothing! No wonder you were longing to move back to the island. The
place where you and your lover had such wonderful times—”

“Sara, come on,” Steve had said, trying to take her in his arms.

But she had been in a fury then, feeling trapped, and angry because no one could understand how it was for her—and jealous, jealous beyond words that Mary had children and Sara had only this week of cramping womb and flowing wasted blood.

She had pulled away from Steve. She had gone into their guest bedroom and lay on the bed, sobbing.

At last Steve had come in. He had sat down next to her on the bed and put his hands on her shoulders. “Sara, I hate it that you’re so upset,” he said. “Listen, we can always move back to Boston. I wouldn’t mind at all. We could buy a place outside Boston, in the country, you could go back to work for Donald James.…”

Slowly becoming sane again, Sara remembered all the cocktail parties for authors she had gone to, all the authors she had picked up at the airport for her boss, all the handsome men who wrote or edited or published or worked somehow in the field and who had flirted with her or complimented her or somehow passed through her life vividly enough to remind her that she was a sexually attractive young woman. Steve had never been jealous of those parties she had gone to by herself, of those men she had “had to” eat dinner with or somehow entertain. He had never accused her of anything during all those associations with all those men. She knew he loved her as much as she loved him. She really did know that.

“Oh, Steve,” she had wailed. “I’m so ashamed. I know you love me. I know I’m acting like a bitch. I’m just so jealous, so jealous of the way she looks at you, of what she is always trying to imply.”

“She means nothing to me, I promise you. I was the one who broke up with her, if it’s any comfort to you.” (It was—great comfort.) “I’d kept going with her for months just out of habit. She’s really not that interesting, if you really knew her, Sara. She’s—oh, Sara, I never would have
married
her.”

Sara had turned over, scooted across the bed, snuggled into Steve’s arms. “You would never have married anyone but me,” she told him.

“That’s right,” he said. “That’s absolutely right.”

They had not discussed Mary after that, but Sara could tell whenever the gang was together that Steve was doing his best to deflect Mary’s attentions.

Now he sat, his arm flung casually across the back of Sara’s chair, a beer in his
other hand, involved in a conversation with Mick and the other guys about football.

“Listen,” Carole Clark said, touching Sara’s arm, “are you guys going off-island for Thanksgiving?”

“No,” Sara answered. “We’ll stay here. My family’s all back in the Midwest and Steve’s parents are in Florida.”

“Great,” Carole said. “Then you and Steve can spend Thanksgiving with all of us. If you want to, I mean. The gang usually gets together at someone’s house every year for Thanksgiving and every couple brings something and it’s a huge feast. It’s going to be at my house this year. I’m doing the turkey and the stuffing, and everyone else is bringing the rest.” Carole paused. “I know it’s late asking you, but, um, we weren’t sure you’d want to come. I mean, we’ll all have our kids there, so there’ll be about a thousand children, and the noise level—well, you know, it won’t be exactly elegant.”

“It sounds
wonderful
!” Sara exclaimed. Conflicting emotions battled inside her: she was delighted that Carole had asked them, but terrified at her words. Did Carole think she was too cold, too unaffectionate to enjoy little children? Was Sara secretly flawed and could everyone sense it?

Carole was rattling on now, about what the others were bringing, wine and sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie and vegetables—what would Sara like to bring? Did she have any specialty? Sara roused herself and began discussing favorite recipes. Annie Danforth made her husband trade places with her so she could join in the conversation. Sara liked Annie—partly, admittedly, because Annie was in her early thirties and had no children yet—but also because she was a nice, intelligent woman. This evening was the first time Sara had had a chance to spend any length of time getting to know Carole and Annie, and with a beer inside her and the talk flowing so naturally around her, she began to have a warming sense of things being all right with the world.

“Hi, everybody!” came a high sweet breathless greeting.

Sara looked up and inwardly groaned: it was The Virgin, at last blessing them with her presence.

“Sorry I’m so late, I had some little kiddies stay late—you know, Mandy’s children—she’s in the hospital and Greg couldn’t get off work sooner.”

As she talked, Mary slipped off her thrift shop tweed man’s coat and pulled a muffler from around her neck. She was wearing jeans, knee-high boots, a green turtleneck sweater as tight as skin.
Well
,
Sara thought sardonically
,
we can all see that you haven’t lost or gained an ounce this week
.

“I told Bill he just had to stay home with our kiddies tonight,” Mary was saying, her breathless voice making everything she said seem of immense importance. “I’ve been with children all day and need a little adult time! And we couldn’t get a sitter. But I can’t stay long, just one beer, and I want to hear how you all are!”

Mary slipped her slender hips into a chair between Annie Danforth and Pete Clark.

“Your Jeremy was so cute today!” Mary exclaimed, turning to Carole and back to Pete. She began a detailed account of something the Clarks’ three-year-old had done, and the Clarks listened, rapt. Sara watched, thinking that there must be nothing as enthralling as stories about one’s children being clever.

Sara leaned back in her chair and sipped her beer. People started talking in small groups around the table again, about football, or what had happened at work, or the selectman’s meeting the night before. Keeping a pleasant alert look on her face, Sara surreptitiously listened to her insides: what was going on? She wasn’t cramping yet. Nothing seemed to be happening. She leaned forward, put her elbows on the table, smiled at nothing and everything. Would the time come when Mary would say, “Oh, Sara, your baby did the cutest thing today!”?

“Sara,” Mary said suddenly, leaning forward across the table toward Sara, “I’ve been wanting to ask you something.” Her voice was low and secretive. “Now you go on and talk to the guys,” she ordered Pete Clark. “This is just for us women!”