Souvenir of Cold Springs (11 page)

“Jamie's idea of civil is most people's idea of unbearable.”

Thea leaned over Nell and put her cheek against her hair. “We should be patient with him.”

“You're too good for this world, Thea.” She took Thea's hand and kissed it. “You're a saint. Saint Thea. The first lesbian saint.”

Thea laughed. “I doubt it.” She sat down and poured more tea for them both. The music swelled: a soprano-alto duet.
O Jesu. O Meister
. Nell watched Thea listening to it with her mouth open, lost in the music. She thought:
she really is a saint, she is perfectly good, without her I would be an evil person
. She remembered the first time she saw Thea: the new history teacher, older than Nell, a big, bosomy woman with a sweet smile and that amazing hair. She remembered how she had been drawn to Thea right away, couldn't leave her alone, used to walk by her classroom just to hear her low, clear voice talking about the Greeks and the Romans. For ten years, she had been convinced that Thea had saved her from some sort of hell.

When the music stopped, Thea said, “Really, Nell, I think we're the ones who have to make the effort with Jamie. He's upset. We're happy. We can afford to be magnanimous.”

“Oh, let's just forget him,” Nell said. “If we're so happy, let's talk about something pleasant. Let's do England.”

They were poring over their favorite guidebook—the student guide they preferred because it listed everything that was cheap—when Jamie returned.

They both looked up, without speaking. Jamie stood in the middle of the kitchen floor with his hands clasped in front of his crotch. The sun made his pink head shiny. He was wearing his seersucker jacket, wrinkled chinos, a clean white shirt, and his yellow tie with the regimental stripes. What a horrible outfit, Nell thought automatically. On the radio was harpsichord music. Perfect: she always considered harpsichord music effete and boring.

There was an awkward silence. “So, Jamie,” Nell said at last. “Are you going to make coffee, or what?”

“I actually came in to make an announcement.”

“Well, get yourself some coffee first.”

“Maybe I will have some tea.”

He sat down at the table. Nell and Thea raised their eyebrows at each other, and Thea poured him a cup. He put in milk and sugar, frowning so that he looked older than he was. Smile, Jamie, Nell thought. It takes ten years off your age.

“Scone?” She offered him the plate.

He shook his head. Too agitated to eat, she thought. This must be a major announcement. She would say that to Thea afterward: the way he acted, I thought he was going to tell us he was pregnant.

“Quite a coincidence,” he said.

“What?”

He nodded down at the guidebook. “England. That's where I'm going.”

“You, Jamie? You're going to England?” She couldn't believe it. Jamie had never been anywhere. He wouldn't fly and wouldn't sail. “There are only two ways to get there, you know,” she said. “Astral projection doesn't count.”

“I'm going to fly, Nell,” he said with dignity.

“How wonderful,” Thea said. “You'll love it, Jamie.”

“That's your announcement?” asked Nell. “I can't stand this music. Anybody mind?” She got up and turned off the radio.

He cleared his throat. “I'm going with Sandra. We're getting married.”

Nell and Thea stared at him, then at each other, then back at Jamie. He sat looking down into his cup, smiling slightly and trying not to, like a little boy who's just confessed to some harmless bit of mischief.

“Jamie? Am I hearing this right?”

His smile exploded. He looked ten years younger—at least. “We're getting married over there,” he said. “She called her parents last night. Woke them up. They're delighted. They live in Somerset. The wedding will be in their village church. And then we'll live somewhere in Cornwall, probably. Sandra loves Cornwall. She says it's a perfect place to paint. I'm going to concentrate on landscapes for a while—forget the damned portraits. If I invest what I've got wisely, I'll be in good shape financially. And of course Sandra will be working. She suggests I get drunk before I board the plane.”

“Jamie, how marvelous,” Thea said. She put her hand on his, and he smiled into her face. “What a lovely surprise.”

“Wait. Wait just a minute,” Nell said. “You are talking about Sandra Kilburn, your student?”

“Obviously.”

“And how long have you two been—whatever. Involved.”

“Not quite as long as you two have,” he said—reproachfully, somehow, as if long involvements were particularly sinful. “Not for years. Months is more like it. Since last winter.”

“Jamie—where? When?”

She was stunned. It was like the revelation of another plane of existence below the one she knew, a sinister shadow world peopled by strangers. And then she realized that Jamie must have felt the same when he saw her and Thea embracing on the lawn.

“The student-teacher relationship is often a highly emotional one, Nell,” he said. “Especially in the arts. Sandra and I have become very close. She's an extremely gifted painter, as you know. Though of course her profession is that of art instructor in a school.”

“Oh Jamie, don't be so pompous,” Nell said. “This is wonderful news. I'm so glad. Do you mean to say that you two have been having a
relationship
up there in your studio? On that squeaky old cot? Since last winter?” She got up and went around the table to hug him. He smelled vaguely of aftershave—leftover from last night. That too was a secret. “And you're in love? And Sandra? She really—?”

Thea frowned at her and she stopped. Sandra was no more than thirty, an Englishwoman who had come over with her American husband. They had been divorced a year or so ago. Nell had met her a couple of times—a stocky redhead, not unattractive in a gym-teacher sort of way, with an accent that sounded overdone. She had once complained to Nell that in America you couldn't get milk with cream on top.
Cream you don't need, honey
, Nell had thought.

“Yes, believe it or not,” Jamie said, squirming away from her embrace. “She loves me, too. She's most anxious to get married. And she's very homesick for England. She's given notice at the school. We're going to leave as soon as we can get organized. In a month or so, we hope.”

Nell sat down again. “Well, I'll be damned, Jamie. All I can say is, it's about time.”

“I'll bet that's not all you can say, Nellie. I'll bet you two will have plenty to say when I'm gone.”

They sat looking at each other, and then they began to laugh. Thea joined in, and the three of them spontaneously took hands, like people at a seance, laughing like maniacs. Nell thought: this should have happened years ago, all of it, the truth should have come out, all the truth. Thea was right, truth is better. She thought of Jack Wentworth, who had died of cancer last winter—of the night she had revealed to him, a man she hardly knew, the great truth of her life. She squeezed Jamie's hand and laughed with tears in her eyes. Then she saw that they were all crying a little, and that made them laugh harder and let go hands to wipe their eyes with napkins.

When they calmed down, Jamie looked at his watch and said, “I should be going. I'm picking Sandra up for church.”

“Church?”

He grinned again—the new Jamie: easygoing, cheerful, a fiancé, a churchgoer. “Sandra goes to the Episcopalian church on James Street. She wants me to go with her so she can introduce me to the rector.”

“My God,” Nell said. “Jamie, you've been an atheist since—”

“Since Peggy died.”

How shocking his rage and bitterness had seemed because he was only eleven. Little Jamie, the pet. “Forty-two years,” she said.

“You don't have to believe in God to go to church with the woman you love,” he said, and Thea shook her head, agreeing, her eyes misting over again.

Jamie stood up. “I want to say one more thing, Nell. Thea.” He pursed up his lips again but it wasn't the same. He would always be different now: she would never see him as he used to be. And how had that been? She'd never known him, and vice versa. The thought came to her:
I don't know him, but I do love him
—old Jamie, her baby brother. She could remember him in diapers, Peggy changing him, saying baby shit looked like cooked squash.

“What, Jamie dear?” Thea asked. Sometimes she went too far.

Jamie looked at her anxiously. “I apologize for what I said yesterday about you two, Thea. I'm sure Nell told you how upset I was. It was a shock, I admit it. You think you know someone, and—”

“Life is stranger than you think, Jamie,” Nell said, looking sharply at him. “And it's much more interesting that way.”

“No, no, I know that, Nell. Don't get mad at me all over again. I had a long talk with Sandra last night. She's very tolerant, very—wise about things like this.”

“English,” Nell said, nodding at Thea. Thea smiled and, under the table, pressed Nell's bare foot with her own.

“And you were absolutely right, Nellie,” Jamie went on. His voice was jerky, forced. He was doing his duty, making a speech. She imagined Sandra squeezing a promise out of him.
Jamie, my deah boy, you ebsolutely mahst a-pole-ow-gize
. “What you said yesterday. That as long as you love someone. And if things are a bit unorthodox, well—I mean, I know people will say things about Sandra and me. I'm more than twenty years older than she is. I'm practically an old man, and she's so—” He gestured vaguely, with his secret smile. “So I just want to say that I think it's fine about the two of you. Who am I to—” He stuck his hands abruptly in his pockets and jingled his keys. “As long as we're all happy,” shrugging, and then beaming at them with his new, youthful grin.

They embraced him at the door, and when he was gone they made a fresh pot of tea and ate more scones. There were endless things to talk about. They decided that Thea would move in when Jamie left. They'd split everything fifty-fifty. Thea could stop paying her exorbitant rent; it would give her a lot more money; they could easily afford England. They could go over for the wedding. They could visit Nell's old friend Gillian Welsh, who was in a nursing home in London, and they could see the Turner exhibit at the British Museum. And they could buy Jamie and Sandra a wedding present over there and save shipping—get something arty in a craft shop. They said over and over that they couldn't believe it—old Jamie—what next? Finally, when two more pots of tea were drunk, when they couldn't stuff in another sip, another bite, when they had thoroughly hashed over Sandra and Jamie and the wedding and their trip and their new life and how unbelievable it all was, they began to believe it.

Except that a voice in Nell's head kept saying: it's too perfect, it can't last, I don't deserve it. She imagined herself alone someday, living in the house she had shared first with Jamie, then with Jamie and Caroline, now with Thea. How much harder it would be. How bereft she would be, how black the void. They both assumed, always, that Thea would die first. Nell had the constitution of a tank, the energy of a girl in her teens. Thea had ailments—all kinds, and she was past sixty. She had no gall bladder, no uterus, cataracts forming, arthritis in one foot. Breast cancer ran in her family, her mother and sister had both died of it …

Jamie was gone, Thea would die. Even Dinah—her fifth Dinah, after all—wouldn't live forever. And there Nell would be, alone. She'd have nothing again—just the relatives coming to see her once a year, at Thanksgiving. All that arguing. Teddy drunk, Lucy nursing her bad memories, Mark being alternately sarcastic and silent. And the kids—well, not really kids anymore. Not the sweet little people she used to cuddle. Heather primping in the bathroom, Margaret with her nose in a book, Peter such a smart alec—like that time he cursed Teddy, and Teddy didn't say a word, just poured himself another drink. Poor little Ann on tranquilizers and antidepressants, stuck away in those terrible schools, at the age of ten, eleven. Half the family vegetarians, refusing the turkey. Even poor old Mr. Fahey wouldn't make it to many more dinners. But Thea's empty place at the foot of the table would be the worst.

Thea bustled around the kitchen. Dirty dishes in the dishwasher, leftover scones in a plastic bag, tea leaves into the compost. She hummed the Bach cantata as she worked; she had a rich, pretty voice, slightly off. Nell sat in her chair watching her. She remembered the first time Thea had come to her house, an afternoon in early spring. They had sat in the living room and drunk sherry. A spar of sunlight lay across Thea's chest. Nell had raised her hand, and the gray shadow of her finger in the sun touched Thea. A phantom touching her breast, stroking it. Thea had noticed nothing. Nell had trembled with desire and then, in shame, clenched her hands together in her lap. Then that night they had talked, she had confessed everything, and Thea had touched her in just that way, the way Nell's shadow had. But not a shadow. A flesh-and-blood woman. The love of her life.

She wanted to tell Thea she was scared. She knew she was like Jamie in some ways—she had the melancholy streak that all the Kerwins seemed to have, and she was, underneath it all, timid and afraid of change. Afraid also that if Thea lived with her, got to know her that extra, intimate bit more, she would stop loving her.

To get rid of her fears, she joked. “Can't you just see Jamie as the perfect English gentleman? He'll wear tweeds and pick up Sandra's accent and write indignant letters to the
London Times
about people letting their dogs foul the footpaths.”

“Poor Jamie,” Thea said. “He's going to be a respectable married man soon, Nell. You shouldn't make fun of him.”

“What nonsense,” Nell said. “God wouldn't have created people like Jamie if he didn't mean us to laugh at them.” And then, when they were going upstairs to get dressed, she caught Thea's arm and blurted it out. “You won't desert me, will you?”