Nantucket Nights (6 page)

Antoinette nudged Kayla with her foot, and she snapped back to life.

“Speak, Val,” Antoinette said. “Confess.”

Valerie sipped her champagne with excruciating slowness, prolonging the dramatic moment. She wiped the lipstick smudge from her glass. “It’s Jacob Anderson,” she said.

“Jacob Anderson,” Kayla repeated. “Jacob, who works for Raoul?”

“Yes.”

Antoinette drained her champagne. “Jacob Anderson. That name rings a bell. Do I know Jacob Anderson?”

“He’s on Raoul’s crew,” Kayla said. “You know him, Antoinette. Dark hair, green eyes, a real sweet-talker.”

“Excuse me?” Val said.

Kayla thought of Jacob reaching out and touching her lip. How sure she’d been that he was going to kiss her. She had wanted him to, she realized now. She had wanted Jacob Anderson to kiss her—and so a part of her was stung by this news. A part of her did want to rebel against it. Valerie was sleeping with Jacob. He was her secret.

“He has a very sexual nature,” Kayla said. “He’s about thirty, he drives a blue-and-white Bronco.”

“He’s thirty-two,” Valerie said. “Antoinette doesn’t know him.”

“I know him,” Antoinette said. “He helped Raoul build my house.” She looked at Val. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you,” Val said. She poured herself another glass of champagne. “We’re in love.”

“You’re in
love?”
 Kayla said.

“What?” Val said. “I’m not
allowed
to be in love with Jacob Anderson?”

“Of course you’re allowed,” Kayla said. “It’s just .. . Oh, I don’t know.”

“You do know,” Val said. “You think it’s silly. You think he’s too young.”

“There’s no such thing as too young when you’re a woman over forty,” Antoinette said. She kicked off her Chuck Taylors, peeled off her leggings and leotard until she was nude before them in the moonlight. “Now I don’t know what you ladies came here for, but I came to swim. I’m going in.”

“Me, too,” Kayla said. She slid out of her sweats and her T-shirt. She examined her own naked body, but she knew how different she looked from Antoinette and Val. Antoinette had a ballerina’s body: tall, slender, and lithe. Statuesque. Val was more muscular—lifting free weights in her office was no joke—her arms were perfectly toned and she had a teeny-tiny little butt that probably fit into one of Jacob Anderson’s hands. Kayla, in comparison, was thick—full, droopy breasts, rounded belly, dimpled thighs. She tried not to get discouraged by this.

Valerie pried off her sandals. “You guys aren’t happy for me,” she said.

“I’m happy for you,” Kayla said. “I’m glad it’s Jacob. I like Jacob.”

Val unbuttoned her crisp white shirt. “You’re not angry?”

“Why would I be angry?” Kayla asked.

“I don’t know,” Val said. “I’m just so happy, and I want you to be happy, too.”

“I’m happy!” Kayla said. It was difficult not to feel like everyone’s mother when the people around her acted like children. “You have my blessing. Really.”

They heard a splash and turned to see Antoinette plunge into the water. Kayla and Val hurried in behind her.

The water was the perfect foil for Val’s news. Soft waves rolled over Kayla’s shoulders. Her anger and confusion subsided. She didn’t wonder about the trajectory her thoughts had taken in the last ten minutes—why she felt Val was going to say Raoul’s name, why she felt a pinch of jealousy when Val said Jacob’s name instead. She didn’t consider these things. Or rather, she considered them and then let them go, like Luke letting go of the string of his purple balloon that afternoon. Kayla concentrated on the simple perfection of the water, the moonlight, the lighthouse, the Methuselah of champagne. Swimming with her two dear friends.

Antoinette dived and surfaced like a dolphin, her dark hair sleek against her head. “My daughter arrives tomorrow,” she said.

She obviously said this for Val’s benefit, since Kayla already knew. But Val was quiet. Antoinette went under again.

“Did you hear Antoinette’s secret?” Kayla asked Val. “Her daughter arrives tomorrow. The daughter she gave up for adoption.”

Val was bobbing in the waves; Antoinette was the only one of the three of them who actually swam. Val shrugged. She didn’t seem surprised at all.

Antoinette surfaced.

“Start at the beginning,” Kayla said. “When did she call you?”

“Wednesday night,” Antoinette said.

“And what did she say? Did she ... did she introduce herself?”

“Obviously.”

“Well, I mean, did she say, “Hi, I’m Lindsey, your daughter’?”

“Something like that.”

“Lindsey wasn’t what you named her, though, was it?”

“I didn’t give her a name at all,” Antoinette said. She dived under and stayed below water a long time. Kayla got the message: Antoinette didn’t want to talk about it. Kayla tried to imagine what it would be like to be in Antoinette’s place. A daughter she’d given away. What if the daughter looked just like the husband? It was too bittersweet, too powerful. You’d want to see the girl more than anything else, your own
child,
but it would be scary, too. All the emotion Antoinette had escaped twenty years ago would come walking across the tarmac tomorrow.

“What are you going to do with your daughter?” Kayla asked. “Do you have plans?”

“No plans,” Antoinette said.

“What are you going to say to her?” Kayla asked. “What are you going to tell her?”

“I’ll answer her questions,” Antoinette said. “I explained the basic story to her over the phone.”

“Will we get to meet her?” Kayla asked.

“I’m busy this weekend,” Val said. “With Jacob.”

“I want to meet her,” Kayla said.

“Maybe you can pick her up at the airport and take her to your house,” Antoinette said. “Maybe you could pretend you’re her mother, Kayla. I’m sure she’d be happier with you.”

“Come on, Antoinette.”

“No, I’m serious,” Antoinette said. “Why don’t you take her?”

“You
are
the consummate parent, Kayla,” Val said, playing with the chains at her neck. In the moonlight they looked like strands of golden thread. “The perfect mother of four perfect children. We agreed on that at lunch the other day.”

Kayla pictured Val and Antoinette sitting together at lunch—at 21 Federal or the Galley—someplace expensive and elegant. She was more than just jealous, more than just hurt at not being asked along. She was angry that they had talked about her. “Shut up,” Kayla said. “Just shut up.”

She swam to shore with some difficulty, because the tide was going out and waves kept washing her backwards. She struggled back to the beach, where she buried her face in one of the towels she’d brought—it was scratchy and dry and smelled like Bounce. She toweled her body and hair and stepped into her clothes. Her heart was beating wildly. Why was she so angry? She wondered if this was how Theo felt—consumed with unreasonable anger, with rage that seemed to come from nowhere. Or maybe she was so angry because of Theo. Because her friends were telling her that she was the perfect mother, and she knew they were being sincere. Antoinette gave her child up, and Val had no children— they had left the mothering to Kayla. Kayla had spent her adult life doing the best job that she possibly could, and yet when she thought about Theo, she knew she had failed. Her oldest child was a brilliant, blazing example of how she had failed.

Kayla unwedged her purse from underneath the front seat of the car. She rummaged through it until she found the bottle of Ativan Dr. Donahue had prescribed, and she put a pill under her tongue. Then she poured herself another glass of champagne and swallowed the pill, thinking that she would go to the airport tomorrow and spy on Antoinette and her daughter. She would witness the awkwardness between them, the inevitable disappointment when they saw each other’s faces—and maybe that would give her some small, mean satisfaction, watching Antoinette fail, too.

Val and Antoinette emerged from the water, dried off, and wrapped themselves in their towels. Kayla poured them each another glass of champagne, and without conversation, the three of them started in on their feast: Kayla pulled lobster meat free of the scarlet shell and dipped it indiscriminately into the melted butter, she smeared hunks of baguette with the Saint André, and she popped raspberries into her mouth like bonbons. The food was so delicious that Kayla started to cry. It was the Ativan kicking in. Soon, she was sniffling and sobbing, and Val and Antoinette stared at her. She poured herself another glass of champagne, then one for Val and Antoinette.

“Did I say something that upset you, Kayla?” Val said.

“It’s not you,” Kayla said, reaching for another hunk of baguette. She was feeling light-headed and drunk. “I guess it’s time for me to tell my secret. It’s about Theo.”

There was a spectacular silence. She was coherent enough to notice that—a silence that was different from quiet, different from lack of conversation. She raised her head and watched Val and Antoinette exchange a look.

“What about Theo?” Val asked.

“Something’s happened to him,” Kayla said. “He’s changed. He hates me, he hates his brother and sisters, he even hates Raoul. He’s turned vile and disgusting and scary.” Then she remembered something she had been trying to erase from her mind since the moment she discovered it, a week before. “He drove his Jeep through my garden.” The words sounded pale and insufficient for what had happened. Kayla woke up one morning and found her garden ruined. Every single vegetable, herb, and flower had been buried in a Crosshatch of deep ruts. Theo had run the Jeep back and forth until every plant was torn to bits, every vegetable smashed. And he made no move to hide it: the tires of his Jeep were muddy. He’d had the gall to park the Jeep in the driveway with muddy tires. It was then she knew that her child hated her, because that garden was her project, it was her avocation, it was hers and hers alone. Raoul didn’t even notice anything wrong. “It took me three days to dig everything up, to get it cleaned out. The whole thing is gone. He stole it from me.”

After a second, Val turned to Antoinette. “Well, what do you think of that?” Antoinette said, “He’s a teenager, Kayla. He’ll get over it.”

They drank more champagne. They finished the lobsters and the cheese and the berries. Kayla leaned back in the sand and closed her eyes. The Ativan was working its magic. Val and Antoinette spoke words that made no sense, a code. Or maybe the words made sense but just not to her because she was asleep; maybe the words got jumbled up with a dream she was having. Kayla dreamt that the string of Luke’s purple balloon was wound around the legs of a baby seagull, and tangled, so that the bird couldn’t fly. The gull tried to fly and Kayla chased after it, wanting to cut the string. But she couldn’t get close enough.

Kayla heard herself snore, and she jolted awake. She reached instinctively for her glass of champagne, drank what was left, and filled it again, lifting the Methuselah with ease now. The huge bottle was half empty.

“What were you guys talking about while I was asleep?” Kayla asked. “Were you discussing what a bad mother I am?”

“You’re not a bad mother at all, Kayla,” Val said. “I’m sure whatever Theo’s problem is, it has nothing to do with you. You’re being too sensitive again.”

“What is it, then?”

Val patted her knee. “It’s school or something. Friends. A girlfriend.”

Kayla shook her head. “No, if it were that kind of thing he would have told Raoul. He tells Raoul everything.”

Antoinette interrupted them. “I have something to say. I have my secret to tell.”

“You already told your secret,” Kayla said. “About your daughter, remember? Only one secret per customer.”

“Maybe you should stop drinking, Kayla,” Val said. “It’s really bringing your emotions to the surface.”

“So what? I thought that’s what tonight was about. Letting it all hang loose.”

“I have a confession to make,” Antoinette said.

Kayla turned to her friend. Antoinette was looking at her in a meaningful way, and Kayla got an awful vibe. “Oh, God,” she said in a voice she didn’t recognize as her own. “Don’t tell me. Are
you
having an affair with Raoul? Are you screwing my husband?”

Antoinette sat perfectly still for a moment, staring at Kayla. Kayla stared back at first with accusatory fire, then with defensiveness, and finally with shame. She was ruining everything. But before Kayla could find the words to apologize, Antoinette rose and her towel fell away, exposing her beautiful dark body. Kayla thought she was going to drive off in the Trooper, leaving them there. Kayla wouldn’t have blamed her. But Antoinette didn’t get into the car. Instead, she put her arms out like she was holding an imaginary beach ball, and she pirouetted into the water. Kayla watched in a stupor; she
was
drunk. Antoinette swam straight out.

Kayla turned to Val. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

Val blinked. “Kayla, what is
wrong
with you?”

“I don’t know,” Kayla said.

Kayla waited for Antoinette’s dark head to surface so that she could call out an apology. She had no idea why those words escaped her lips—
Are you screwing my husband?
It was the Ativan talking, and the champagne, combined with the awful memory of Missy Tsoulakis. Even after nineteen years of marriage, Kayla was insecure—and especially when she saw forty-four-year-old women with incredible bodies like Antoinette’s and Val’s. But still, how dumb of her. Insensitive. And inappropriate for Night Swimmers. It was their twentieth anniversary, and she’d ruined it.

Kayla missed Antoinette surfacing; she was looking in the wrong place. Her mental clock ticked: How long was too long? The water was dappled by moonlight; it was all bright surfaces and dark troughs. After a minute, she stood up.

“Do you see her?”

Now Val was the one lying down with her eyes closed, probably off in dreamland with Jacob Anderson. “Do I see who?”

“Antoinette.” Kayla’s insides felt like they were filling up with something dark and syrupy. Foreboding. Fear. “I don’t see Antoinette,” she said. Her voice sounded calm; the Ativan reined her in.

“She’s swimming,” Val said.

“I don’t see her,” Kayla said. She walked closer to the water, which reflected the moonlight like a mirror. Was Antoinette out there floating on her back? “Antoinette, I’m sorry! Hey, I’m sorry! I’m stupid drunk. Please come out! Antoinette!”