Morning (33 page)

But she hadn’t expected Steve to notice it. He was so zonked out these days with his work, either tired or worried, he scarcely noticed her at all, and she didn’t mind, she had some idea of what he was going through, because she was so engrossed these days in setting down the guidelines for the new Heartways House series. Some of the financial pressure had eased with the big checks they had received for Christmas from both his parents and her mother. Still, they had to be careful and hardworking. One of the reasons she had decided to wear this dress tonight was that it meant she didn’t have to buy a new one, or wish that she
could
buy a new one.

Now that Sara had so inadvertently captured her husband’s attention, she basked in it, pleased. She turned slowly in front of him, holding the skirt. “You like it?” she asked.

“I like you,” Steve said. “You are the most beautiful woman on the planet.”

“Oh, Steve,” Sara said, and felt tears of joy rush to her eyes. In the early days, when they had just met, he would say things like that all the time, but it had been years
since he had said anything so extravagant.

He started dressing, in gray flannels, a pink button-down shirt, and his navy blue blazer, then sat down on the bed to put on his shoes. “When was the last time I wore this blazer?” he asked. “It seems like ages.” Abruptly he looked up at Sara and asked, “Do you ever think about how different our lives could have been if we’d made different choices? For example, if I’d kept on teaching at the prep school. Then I’d be wearing clothes like this every day.”

“Then you never would have met me!” Sara said. She sat on the bed and leaned against the headboard. It was unusual for Steve to be so talkative. Probably the fact that he had tomorrow, New Year’s Day, off was helping him relax. Whatever the reason, she was happy; she loved talking with him. She loved knowing what he was thinking about.

“Well, then, if we hadn’t decided to come to Nantucket. Would I still be working for Masterson? Or would I have decided to go out on my own in Boston? And if we hadn’t moved, you might be senior editor at Walpole and James now.”

“I’m not sorry we came here, are you?” Sara asked.

“No,” Steve said. “I love it here. And in spite of my anxieties, I think my business is going to make it. And I think I’m going to make a difference—infinitesimal, but real—to the way this island looks. No, I’m glad I’m here. But when I see you looking the way you do now, Sara, I wonder if … if you ever have doubts.”

“None,” Sara said honestly. “I love it here. The only thing that bothers me is that I feel guilty about this trip to England. I hate to think of being away from you for a whole week. It doesn’t seem right. Sure you don’t want to come with us?”

Steve laughed. “Do you know what I’m planning to do while you’re gone? I’m going to buy eight big cans of chili or beef stew and eight pints of Häagen-Dazs and several six-packs of Michelob and eight packages of pretzels, and every night when I come home from work I’m going to sit in front of the TV and drink beer and eat my stew and ice cream and veg out. When I want to get wild, I’ll have another beer and some pretzels. I’m not going to answer the phone or go to any parties, hell, I may not even shave. I’m really going to be a slob.”

Sara laughed. Then, “You know,” she said, turning aside, “I’m having my period again.” She waited for him to speak. When he said nothing, she said, her voice surprising her with its bitterness, “Why don’t you say something? Sometimes I feel lonely, trying to have a baby and grieving when I don’t.”

“Sometimes I feel lonely, too!” Steve said, his voice raised. “Sometimes I think that baby’s all you care about—it seems to be just about all you think about.”

“Oh, Steve,” she protested, turning to face him.

“No, wait,” Steve said. “Listen to me. I’ve got a lot on my mind now with my business, problems with the bookkeeping, supervising all my men, making decisions I’m not used to making. And sometimes when I try to talk to you about it, I see you sort of fade away from me. I mean you sit there looking at me and nodding, but I know you’re thinking about that baby.”

“If you were in my body,” Sara said, “if you knew what it was like to wonder what every little twinge meant—”

“But there’s more than that, Sara,” Steve said, putting his hands on her arms. “Don’t you see, there has to be more than that for us. Sure, I want to have a baby, and we will, but I also want to build up my business and my reputation, and I want to make a difference to this island and the way it develops. And I wish I had someone who cared about it to really listen to me. If you can’t focus on me now and then, on
me
just for a few minutes—well, then, what’s our marriage about?”

Sara put her hands on her husband’s chest and looked up at him. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve gone a little bit mad. And I do think of you, you know—I keep feeling that I’m failing you by not getting pregnant.”

“Sara, believe me, I’m glad we don’t have a kid right now. I don’t think I could handle it. It’s fine with me if you don’t get pregnant for months.”

Well, it’s not fine with me!
Sara wanted to scream, but a warning voice inside her said:
Haven’t you been listening to Steve?

“Is there something wrong?” Sara asked. “Are you having any special problem?”

The look on Steve’s face was a gift. “No,” he said. “No one special problem—it’s all one giant headache.” He began to elaborate on his problems with a house he was restoring at ’Sconset. Sara listened, responded, asked questions. Suddenly they realized they were late for the dinner-dance, and they rushed out the door, still talking. As they entered the restaurant Sara felt Steve’s arm around her shoulders, keeping her close to him. It was as if they had just finished making love—which, in a way, they had. She felt closer to him than she had for a long time, and more in love.

The Harbor House was glittering with holiday glamour. In the middle of the dining room
a vast Christmas tree, dripping with decorations, towered to the arched ceiling, flashing its bright lights through the room like a lighthouse beacon. The group had its own long table at one end of the room, and everyone was there: Pete and Carole, Wade and Annie, Sheldon and Jamie, Mick and his newest girlfriend, the nymphet Cindy, Bill and The Virgin, and another couple, Watson Marsh and Eileen O’Hara, friends of the Clarks who had come to celebrate the holidays on Nantucket. The meal was delicious, and everyone drank champagne and ordered more champagne; then the band started playing and everyone danced and drank champagne. The room was filled with people and music and laughter under the crepe-paper-garlanded lights.

It was after midnight when Sara and Annie staggered off to the bathroom to repair their makeup. They had just plopped down on the long pink-cushioned seats when Carole and Jamie came in with the new woman, Eileen.

“What a little whore!” Eileen said. She was crying, and her mascara had streaked two black tracks down her face. She collapsed on a bench next to Sara. “What a cunt!”

Two women in their sixties looked askance at Eileen, who did not notice them.

“I know,” Carole said, “I know, Eileen, I’m so sorry.”

“What’s wrong?” Annie asked.

“Watson’s gone off with Mary,” Carole said.

“What?” Sara asked, amazed.

“Yeah,” Carole said. She and Jamie both scrunched down on the other pink sofa.

Sara saw the look Carole gave Annie. It was the look of conspirators, of tired and depressed conspirators.

“Carole, I don’t understand,” Sara pressed.

Carole sighed. “I hate telling tales. But surely you’ve noticed by now, about Mary, I mean.”

“She’s a cunt,” Eileen said. “She’s a horrible, trashy little piece.”

“Do you know our secret name for her?” Jamie said. “We call her HBO. Home Box Office. Because she’ll take her box into your home, into your husband’s office, anywhere.”

“Would you all please tell me what you’re talking about!” Sara shouted, exasperated.

“Now, look, Mary’s my friend,” Carole said. “And she’s a marvelous babysitter. No one in the world could be better with children. And she’s not an
evil
person. She’s
just got this thing about men. It’s like she has to prove to herself, and everyone else, I guess, that she’s irresistible to men, that she can get any man she wants.”

“I think it’s because Bob is such an
asshole
,” Jamie said with drunken emphasis. “I couldn’t live with that man.”

“She was that way before Bob,” Carole said. “She’s always been that way. I feel sorry for her. It’s like an obsession with her, she’s got to get every man she sees interested in her.”

“My God,” Sara said, musing aloud, “I thought she was just that way with Steve. Chasing him, I mean.”

Carole looked at Sara. “Well, she is
especially
that way with Steve. I think she was really in love with him at one time. I don’t know if she’ll ever get over the fact that he didn’t love her. But that’s not why she acts this way. She acted this way before she met Steve. She just has to get every man she meets interested in her, even if it means taking off her clothes in public.”

“
And
sticking her tongue in his ear while dancing with him in front of his girlfriend,” Eileen said. “
And
taking his hand and putting it on her breast.
God
, what gall she has! She’s as pregnant as a kangaroo and she’s still vamping around.”

“Well, her stomach isn’t sticking out
that
far yet, and her boobs are enormous these days,” Jamie said. “As anyone can plainly see in that dress she wore tonight.”

Eileen began to weep, “I just can’t believe it,” she said. “I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe Watson would go off with her. We’ve been together for four years and nothing like this has ever happened.
I’m
the one who wouldn’t get married, I said it was an outdated institution, an anachronism, but now I wish we were married so I could sue the bastard for a divorce.”

“He’s drunk,” Carole said. “I haven’t seen Watson this drunk for years. He usually doesn’t drink much, that’s part of the problem. And cheer up, if they do try to do anything, he probably won’t get very far, they say that when men get drunk they can’t get it up.”

“Watson could get it up if his brain was in a coma,” Eileen said. “But I just don’t understand how he could go off with that bitch.”

“It’s that old sweet and innocent and helpless act,” Annie said. “She’s pulled it on all our husbands. And everyone sort of puts up with it because her own husband is such a gorilla.”

“God,” Sara said, “I wish I’d known all this before now. I’ve been making myself miserable the past year. It seems she’s always asking Steve to take her home and then telling him how unhappy she is, as if he’s responsible for doing something about it.”

“Well, she really is unhappy,” Carole said. “That much is true.”

“Well,
I
don’t have any sympathy for her,” Eileen said.

“I don’t, either,” Sara said, realizing as she spoke that she, too, had had more than enough to drink. Otherwise she never would have admitted how she felt about Mary. “I don’t like her, and I don’t think she likes me.”

“Of course she doesn’t like you,” Carole said. “She hates you. You ‘got’ Steve. He married you. She’ll never forgive you for that. And of course she’s jealous of you for everything else. Your glamorous life.”

“Glamorous!” Sara said. “My life isn’t glamorous!”

“Oh, give me a break,” Carole said. “Of course it is. You go up to Boston all the time, you’re going to
London
this month, you get to swish around in high heels and silk while we’re all squeezing into last year’s jeans.”

“It’s true,” Jamie said. “You’re so lucky, Sara. And I’m jealous of you, too. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate you, I like you, but I feel so sort of pitiful around you sometimes, when I’ve got baby goop stuck to my old shirt or when I see a new dress I’d like and then realize that not only can I not afford it but I wouldn’t have any place to wear it if I could. That’s usually when I run into you, like last week, when I saw you in the A&P. You were wearing high heels and that red cape and you said you had just flown in from Boston and were in a terrible rush, picking up something for dinner. And
I
was wearing my old saggy sweater and had the baby sniveling away in her carrier. The high point of my day was getting
out to the A&P
! As much as I like you, sometimes I hate you!”

“Well,” Sara said, “I envy you all your babies,” but when they groaned and Jamie said, “Yeah, well, when you have your kids, you’ll understand what we’re talking about,” she did not pursue the subject. She could not make herself vulnerable to these women yet; she would rather have their envy than their pity.

“I’m sorry if Mary hates me,” Sara said. “But I don’t see what I can do to make her stop. I’ve never been unkind to her.”

“You can’t do anything,” Carole said. “Mary’s like a child in some ways. Maybe that’s why she’s so good with children. The best you can do is just to ignore her, I guess.
Don’t take it personally. In a way it’s not
you
she hates, it would be any woman who married Steve.”

The group of women filed out of the ladies’ room back into the main lobby, where, they had forgotten, a party was going on. Sara sat down with Steve and told him what had happened. They watched as Eileen drank the coffee served to her, as she gathered up her things to leave. Just as she was going out the door, they saw Watson come in. The group could not hear what was said, but they could see what happened: Eileen drew her hand back and slapped Watson as hard as she could across his face. Then she stormed out the door.

“Jesus Christ, what was
that
all about?” Watson said, crossing the room to their table. The imprint of Eileen’s hand was red on his face.

“Watson, you ass, you went off with Mary,” Carole told him.

“Well, Jesus, Carole, all I did was drive her home. She said her husband had already left and she didn’t feel well. What was I supposed to do, say, ‘Sorry, baby, walk’?”