Nell (29 page)

Andy had taken over the task of cooking dinners for them—they had tacitly agreed that he was the better cook anyway and had more time for it. The evenings were always so pleasant. Nell would shower and change after work and walk to Andy’s—because
Clary often needed the car to drive to the Muse or ’Sconset to meet friends—and there they would eat some delicious meal and talk about the events of the day. Sometimes they watched the news on television. Sometimes they walked along the beach together. Sometimes they sat side by side reading. Each night Nell felt more at ease with Andy, sensed how the rightness of this routine firmed and deepened until the pattern of their lives together seemed as smooth and lustrous and becomingly mature as a string of pearls. She began to think they had found a reliable love.

Once a week Nell got a phone call from the children, who were safe and happy in Chicago. The first week in July, Nell came down to eat breakfast and found Clary and a young man already in the kitchen, drinking coffee. His name was Sam and he played the guitar and became a regular member of their household. By the middle of July, more nights than not, Sam was sleeping with Clary in the O’Learys’ house and Nell was sleeping with Andy all night in his house, coming home only to change clothes before going to the boutique. Nell and Sam and Clary became used to passing one another in the hall in robes, or fresh from the bathroom, or bleary-eyed.

Monday nights, which both Clary and Nell had off, they ate together in the cottage, often with Andy and Sam and Mindy and Felicity and their boyfriends joining them. Just as Nell’s Arlington refrigerator had been stocked with milk and pudding for Hannah and Jeremy, now her Nantucket refrigerator was stocked with Diet Pepsi and six-packs of beer and gallons of cheap white wine for Nell and Clary and their friends. Monday afternoons and some mornings, Nell and Clary would go to the beach to swim and work on their tans.

The first day that Nell went to the beach with Clary, they went to Jetties Beach, which was closest. Nell and Clary were just walking along, lugging their beach blankets, a cooler of ice and Tab, their suntan lotion, and paperback books, when Nell found herself brought to a standstill on the hot sand. She was stunned. Spread before her as far as the eye could see was a vision of life so beautiful and gay that it could have been painted only by an impressionist, by Monet or Renoir. The sea stretched out forever in every possible variation of blue, and the blue horizon was dotted above with white clouds, below with white sails. The beach was speckled with dots of color—people in bathing suits, sand toys, beach towels, and everywhere stood the bright multicolored
beach umbrellas, opening out like a forest of fanciful pink and yellow trees.

Nell and Clary walked on and found a place near the water. They spread their blankets and oiled their skin and lay in the sun. Nell meant to read, but didn’t. She was too drugged by the deep peace that was a natural consequence of the hot sun and generous scenery. The beach was fairly crowded with people, but no one was intrusive and there was more than enough space for everyone to spread out and have a little territory. Nell liked watching the other people on the beach. She enjoyed looking at all the different bodies. There was such an endless variety, and a human being in a bathing suit always seemed to her such a brave and trusting sight, so much bare flesh exposed to the judgment of strangers.

All ages passed by Nell as she lay on her stomach watching, loving all those bodies: tall, short, thin, fat, bony, bouncy; children with their unabashed bottoms winking like silver half-moons from bathing suits; young girls in bright bikinis that showed off their taut bellies, high breasts. Nell watched a couple who must have been in their seventies going into the water together. They had saggy stomachs and gray hair and wrinkled elbows, but they were sweet together, because they were so obviously in love. The man urged the woman farther into the water; he held her hand. They stood in the water and smiled into each other’s eyes. When they came back out to their towels, they knelt next to each other and she dried his back; he dried, gently, her face. Those two have been in love for a long time, Nell thought, smiling. It seemed to her the prettiest sight on the beach.

People bent in front of her, looking for seashells. Children and adults swam and bobbed in the waves, staying close to shore, and farther out some brave woman floated serenely on her back, rocking in the sea’s cradle. Kites with many-colored tails flew above the sand dunes, and now and then a plane would pass overhead bringing a new load of summer people to the island. An earnest plodder with plaid trunks and glasses stomped past Nell, obviously on a serious mission of health. A young woman with a Renoir face—full lips, plump cheeks—came out of the water and surprised Nell with her skinny El Greco body. A seagull flew down just behind Nell and tried to steal a bag of cookies from a family who had carelessly left them open on a blanket. If Nell put her head down in her arms, she could close her eyes and think of the night before and she
could remember with perfect clarity the words Andy had spoken about her breasts, her eyes, her legs, her hair. She could remember how his hands had felt caressing her almost as vividly as she could now feel the sun beating on her skin. The air smelled of coconut oil and Coppertone and salt. Laughter drifted up and down the beach like the kites that drifted in the blue sky up above.

Nell turned over and lay on her back. She could hear the seagulls chortling. Now and then a gull would fly low over her, and that was slightly alarming, the way its black shadow swooped over her body like an omen. Then Nell would raise her head and see the cheerful red or blue sails of windsurfers and be reassured.

After Nell and Clary had been at the beach about an hour, they noticed that all the people who had been swimming or wading in the ocean were coming out of the water. “Look,” Clary said, and Nell and Clary sat up. The lifeguards in their orange trunks and suits were passing up and down the beach, blowing their whistles, motioning for the people to come in. Their gestures were definite. It looked like a scene from
Jaws
.

“Sharks?” Clary asked the people on the blanket next to her.

But no, it was not sharks. A child had been lost, a little boy, and the lifeguards wanted every single person out of the water. As Nell watched, all the people on the beach who had been lying on their blankets just as she had gradually begun to sit up, and then to stand, to cover their eyes and search the water, the horizon. Fear passed through the crowd like a shiver.

“The boy is four years old,” someone told Nell and Clary. It could be my child lost out there, Nell thought, and felt chilled. It was very quiet all up and down the long stretch of beach. Then came the murmur and then the swell of news: The little boy had been found. From the people on the blankets and those standing in the sand, from all up and down that whole great long expanse of beach, there came a sort of exhalation of relief, and more than that, a sense of joy, like a balloon being let into the air.

“The child’s been found,” people said to one another. “The child is okay.” They passed the news up and down the beach, and all at once, when the news reached everyone, people began to applaud.

“That’s good luck,” Clary said to Nell.

Nell smiled at Clary. “Yes,” she agreed. “You see, there is such a thing.”

That night, which could have been any of many nights that summer, so alike were all those warm and gentle evenings, Nell dressed for a party she was going to with Andy. Her skin was brown from the sun and smooth from lotions. She was radiant with happiness. Nell took a scarlet dress from her closet and thought to herself that now it was as if her life were flying out around her as full and bright and vibrant with color as the skirt of a dancer spins out from a woman in a rapturous turn. She realized that she was happy in her life. She knew she would always remember these days.

Seven

One evening in July, Nell walked back to the cottage after work and found Bob Walker sitting on the front steps. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt that said
NINE OUT OF TEN MEN WHO HAVE TRIED CAMELS PREFER WOMEN
. His eyes were the sort of crystalline blue that made women feel just helpless in their love.

“Hi,” he said, smiling his engaging smile. “I thought I’d stop by and see how Clary is.” He was so casual, as if he lived just around the corner or down the street, as if it hadn’t taken a major effort to get to this island, this house.

Nell grinned. “She’s working,” she said. “At the Golden Island on Main Street. She doesn’t get off work till nine. You can go on down and see her there—or you’re welcome to wait here for her.”

Bob followed Nell into the house. “If she’s working, she might be too busy to talk, right?”

“Right,” Nell said.

“Then if it’s all right with you, I’ll just hang around here till she gets back.”

“That’s fine,” Nell said. “I’m going out for dinner, but you’re welcome to make yourself at home. Watch TV—find something in the refrigerator if you’re hungry. There’s a lot of food around.”

“Great,” Bob said. “Thanks a lot. That’s awfully nice of you.”

Nell went upstairs and got ready to go over to Andy’s. She wondered if she should call Clary and warn her. She knew from discussions with Clary that she still loved Bob and that behind all the surface laughter was a well of misery because she missed him, because he was all she wanted in life and she could not have him. Nell decided not to call Clary. Bob’s appearance could only mean something good, could only mean, at the least, that he still cared about her, too, cared enough to come back to see her even though Clary had said it was over forever. Perhaps Bob was coming to propose! Nell’s heart leaped with anticipation. Then she grinned sardonically at herself in the mirror. Jesus, she thought, even now, after all I know, I get a buzz from thinking a man might ask
Clary to
marry
him. It must be physical, hereditary, she thought; that second X chromosome that women are born with and men aren’t must be the one that fishtails inside us with joy at the thought of marriage, that drives us like salmon upstream, blindly wishing for marriage above all other things.

When she went back downstairs, she couldn’t resist saying to Bob, “I’m going now, and I won’t be back until later, if at all. And I suppose I should warn you, Bob. Clary might not come back after work—or she might not come back alone.”

But Clary had come back alone, as Nell found out the next day. And she had talked with Bob and he had spent the night and they had said they loved each other … and then he had left, because after all, they still could not agree and would not change their minds. Bob wanted Clary to move in with him as a lover, and she wanted to go with him as his wife.

Nell sat with Clary awhile that morning. They drank coffee and talked. Clary’s face was swollen again from crying.

“It’s so humiliating,” Clary said. “It’s so embarrassing. That I am the one who has to push marriage,” she said. “It’s so degrading.”

“What do your parents think?” Nell asked.

“Oh well, you know Mom,” Clary said. “She’ll always be old-fashioned. She doesn’t think I should
sleep
with a man until I’m married to him. And Dad, well, his advice was, ‘Why should a man buy a cow when he can get the milk for free?’ ”

“God,
gross
!” Nell said. “Marlow said that? To you?”

Clary laughed. “Well, Nell, it may be crude, but it’s not wrong. Oh, I don’t understand it. Why can’t Bob want what I want? All that stuff that marriage means—that we announce to the world that we love each other, that we’ll plan our lives together, that we belong to each other …” Clary started crying again. After a while she looked up at Nell and asked, “What about you?”

Nell was startled. “Me?” she asked. “You mean what about me and Andy? Oh, Clary, it’s way too soon to even think about that. I’ve only known him a little over two months.”

Of course that was a lie. Already Nell was wondering if there was a chance that she and Andy could have a life together, could have a marriage. They seemed to be so
good together; it was such a pleasure to live as they were living, spending as much time together as they could. But Andy hadn’t mentioned the future, and Nell hadn’t, either. She tried not to think of the future. She tried to live for the day.

That night Nell took Clary to see
Flashdance
. Andy didn’t want to go, and Clary had told Sam and her friends that she didn’t feel well, that she just wanted to go to the movie with Nell and then go home to bed. Nell loved
Flashdance
, and at the end of the movie everyone in the theater cheered and clapped. But as Nell and Clary were walking home to the cottage in the warm July evening, Clary said, “I hate that movie. I really hate it.”

“Good grief, Clary, why?” Nell asked.

“It’s a lie,” Clary said. “It’s a schmaltzy lie. It’s the 1983
Sound of Music
. In that movie Julie Andrews was a nun and a governess who ended up getting happily married, getting what she wanted. Now here’s Jennifer Beals playing a welder and a dancer who gets to be a ballerina and have that gorgeous man, her boss, be dithering around after her with love. That just doesn’t happen in real life. Not even to girls who look like her.”

“Oh, Clary, you’re as beautiful as that girl in the movie.”

“Yes I am!” Clary said, turning on Nell as if Nell had insulted her. “I think I am. But it’s not much good to me, is it? Look, I worked as hard and long to get my degree in biology as that girl did to get into ballet school. And what has my degree gotten me? I can’t even get a decent job unless I want to go with one of the huge firms in Piscataway and spend my days cleaning out rat cages—a rat janitor. And I’m as pretty and clever and nice as that girl, and I don’t see Bob running around after me, trying to make my life easier.”

“Well,” Nell said, “maybe someone will make
Flashdance Two
. In which the girl realizes after working for four years that there are other women who are better ballerinas than she is and that she’ll never be the star, she’ll never get the roses. And her boss will end up chasing after another woman and he’ll never ask her to marry him, because why should he buy the cow when he’s already getting the milk for free? Would you like that? Would you like it if they made a movie like that?
Flashdance Meets Real Life
?”