The Love Season (33 page)

“Ah, Daisy,” he said. He paused for a long time, searching her face. Marguerite felt something coming, something big and important. She wanted him to speak, though she was afraid to prompt him; she was afraid to breathe.

“This is the life,” he said.

This is the life?
Marguerite nodded stupidly. Porter unlocked the door on his third try; then he shed his tuxedo and called her to bed. They made love. Porter fell asleep shortly thereafter, leaving Marguerite to brush her teeth alone among so many square feet of marble and turn off the lights.

As she climbed into bed she realized she felt like crying. She was too old for this kind of rushing emotion, this kind of searing disappointment, and yet the sorrow persisted; it lay down and embraced her.

“A few weeks after your uncle Porter and I returned from Paris, something happened that took me by surprise. Porter called to say that he had fallen in love with his graduate assistant. Caitlin. She was twenty-four years old. Now, I knew he dated other women in New York. It was a source of enormous heartache for me. He took other women to plays and dances and benefits and restaurants. Once, he took a woman to Japan. He wasn’t exactly open about this, but I knew it and he knew that I knew. I never learned a single woman’s name except for the woman he took to Japan; that was a favor he granted me. I presumed they weren’t important enough to be named. He told me he loved me; he used to say I hung the moon. But he would not commit. I thought maybe when we were in Paris…but no. Paris was good-bye. He already belonged to somebody else; every hour he spent with me, he was thinking of this other person. This girl. But I didn’t know that. Until.”

Until the phone call. Marguerite sensed something wrong immediately. Porter’s voice, always booming and upbeat, had been resigned and sorrowful.
You’re the greatest friend I have in all the world, Daisy
, he’d said.
And I’m afraid I’m about to hurt you very badly
.

Marguerite had listened, without comprehending a word he said. Back in September, he’d fallen in love with his graduate assistant, twenty-four-year-old Caitlin Veckey from Orlando, Florida. She was red haired and freckled, fresh faced, naïve, she was young enough to have grown up in the shadow of Disney and Epcot. Marguerite imagined her as a cartoon character, a two-dimensional, Technicolor fairy like Tinkerbell. It was all wrong. If Marguerite was going to lose Porter, finally, after so many years, she wanted it to be to a worthier opponent—a sultry, dark beauty who spoke seven languages fluently, a sophisticate, someone with European sensibilities. Or even one of the women Marguerite had imagined Porter with over the years: Corsage Woman, Overbite Woman, Japan Woman. An aging ballerina or show jumper with a degree from Vassar and a trust fund, a closetful of shoes. But it was not to be. Porter had been stolen away by a child, a Lolita. He was in over his head, he said, in love beyond reason, and the only way he could make things right—with the university, certainly, but also in his own heart—was to marry Caitlin.

I’m getting married, Daisy
, he said.

She thought of Paris and felt deeply betrayed, embarrassed even. All the usual signs had been absent. There had been no mysterious phone calls, no suspect gifts purchased that she knew of. There was the book he’d bought, and the way he’d worked out religiously at the hotel’s fitness center. Twice he’d skipped dessert and he had passed up the Cuban cigars.
Are you getting healthy on me?
she’d asked him, teasing. Now she saw.

Marguerite held the receiver long after Porter hung up, staring out her
bedroom window. Snow was falling, blanketing Quince Street. She remembered back to the first moment she saw him, she remembered the quiet sounds of him waking up on that bench in the Jeu de Paume, the way he’d blinked his eyes rapidly, unable to place himself for a moment. She remembered his worn leather watchband, and the first time his long, tapered fingers touched her hair. That was a Porter Harris this Caitlin person would never know, never understand.

“Your uncle Porter called to say he was marrying Caitlin,” Marguerite said. “He called to say our relationship was over.”

“You must have been devastated,” Renata said.

It was like learning of her own death; she’d always known it was coming, but so soon? In this ridiculous way? She was shocked, incredulous; her ego was like an egg found cracked in the carton; she was angry, insulted—and worried for Porter’s sake. He’d been tricked by beauty and youth, by sex. He didn’t know what he was doing. The end of a seventeen-year relationship seemed too fantastical to Marguerite to be taken seriously. Porter said it was over, he said he was getting married to this young girl from Florida, and he promised he would never bring the girl to Nantucket, meaning he would never return himself. So Marguerite would never see him again. It couldn’t just end, she reasoned; their relationship couldn’t go from a rich and layered creation to
nothing
. Her way of life, her identity, her whole world, was threatening to shift, to tilt, to dump her into cold, unfamiliar water. She and Porter were no longer together? It was impossible. So yes,
devastated
was a fair choice of words. But the hurt was located in distant parts of her—her brain, her reason, her nerves. (Her hands shook for hours; she remembered that.) Her heart cried out for one person, the way a hurt child called out for her mother, and that person was Candace.

“I called your mother to tell her what happened,” Marguerite said.
“The weather was bad, it was snowing, it was horrible weather for traveling, and yet I asked her to come up. She wanted me to come to Dobbs Ferry, but I couldn’t move. I was immobilized.”

I want to come, Daisy
, she said.
Believe me, I do. But Dan is in Beaver Creek looking at a second property and so I’d have to bring Renata—

By all means, bring her
.

I’m worried about traveling with her in this weather. Have you looked at the TV? It’s awful. Is it snowing there?

Snowing, yes. Quietly piling up outside.

Okay
, Marguerite said.
It’s okay. I’m okay
.

Are you?

No
, she said, and she dissolved into tears.
Of course not
.

Daisy, don’t cry
.

Do you understand what’s happened?
Marguerite asked.
You cannot reasonably tell me not to cry
.

Okay, I’m sorry
. There was a long pause, the sound of shuffling papers, the sound of Candace’s sighing.
Okay, we’ll come. We’re coming
.

Marguerite should have backed down at that point; she should have listened to the reluctance in Candace’s voice. What did another day or two days or a week matter? It was blizzarding. Asking anyone to travel in that weather was absurdly selfish, cruel even. And yet those words,
we’ll come, we’re coming
, were the words Marguerite craved. She needed to know there was someone in the world who would do anything for her. That person had never been Porter.

“That night, your mother was on my doorstep, holding you in her arms.”

“I came here?”

“I remember it like it was yesterday. You were wearing pink corduroy overalls.”

Marguerite had been pacing her house for hours when the knock finally came. She opened the door and found Candace and Renata, bundled in parkas, dusted with snow. As soon as she saw them she felt ashamed. She had guilted her best friend into traveling three hundred miles through a blizzard with a child. Candace had caught a flight from White Plains to Providence, where she hired a car to take her to Hyannis, where she caught the freight boat, which was the only boat going. And yet, in her gracious way, she made it sound like an adventure.

It’s a miracle
, Candace said.
But here we are
.

“I remember being embarrassed that I didn’t have dinner ready. All that jangling around the house, I could have been making a stew. Instead, we ordered a pizza, but the pizza place refused to deliver, so your mother trudged down Broad Street to get it. All those years I had cared for her, but she had turned into a real mother hen. She set the table, whipped up a salad, made me a cup of tea—I wanted wine, of course, but she said no, alcohol would only make things worse—and she stared us down until we’d eaten a proper dinner, you and me.”

Renata smiled.

“Your mother brought a prescription of Valium with her, thank God. She gave me two, tucked me into bed, and I fell asleep. I woke up at four in the morning and made a pot of coffee. Your mother woke up, too, and sat with me in the dark kitchen, but neither of us spoke. We didn’t know what to say. It was like we’d known all along the sky was going to fall and then it fell and we pretended to be taken by surprise. Then Candace’s face brightened like she’d had some inspiration, like she’d devised some fool-proof way to get Porter back, to make everything right again. But she did the strangest thing. She insisted on cutting my hair. My hair hadn’t been cut since I was a child. Candace said, ‘
Time for a new look
.’ Or a new outlook. Something like that. She’d cut her own hair that winter—it was
short and she wore a bandanna to push it off her face. She wouldn’t let me say no. We pulled a chair over by the kitchen sink and your mother wrapped me up in an old shower curtain.”

Marguerite sat in the makeshift salon chair. As Candace wet her hair, massaged her scalp, combed the length, and snipped the ends, holding them up between two fingers, something dawned on Marguerite. Something transpired. Marguerite could barely breathe; the truth was so obvious and yet so startling.
This
was what she wanted, all she wanted, Candace here, her warmth, her voice in Marguerite’s ear. Marguerite filled with longing. It wasn’t Porter’s love she sought, and it hadn’t been, maybe, for years. Marguerite wanted Candace; she loved Candace. With Candace fussing and clucking around her, with Candace touching her, Marguerite experienced a new realm of emotion. It was terrifying but glorious, too.

“When she was finished, your mother blew my hair dry and styled it, and when she handed me the mirror I started to cry.”

Candace’s face had fallen apart.
You hate it
.

“I was crying; then I was laughing,” Marguerite said. “I put down the mirror and I took your mother’s hands and I told her that I loved her.”

I love you, too
, Candace said.
You’re the greatest friend I have
.

The greatest friend I have
. Marguerite faltered. Those had been Porter’s exact words and Marguerite thought,
These are the words the Harrises use when they are leaving you
.

I don’t care about Porter
, Marguerite said.
I loved the man dearly at one time, and we were intimate. Yes, we were
.

You’re better off without him
, Candace said.
I’ve been wanting to say that since I arrived. You will be better off
.

It doesn’t matter, Marguerite said. Because when I heard, when Porter told me, my heart cried out for you. You are the one person I cannot bear to lose. I
love you. You are the one that I love. Do you hear what I’m saying? Do you hear?

Confusion flickered across Candace’s face. Marguerite saw it, though it only lasted a second. Did Candace understand what Marguerite was saying?

You’re the best person I know
, Candace said.
I can’t believe what my brother has done to you
.

Say you love me
, Marguerite said.
Please say it
.

Of course I love you. Daisy, yes
.

I want you to love me
, Marguerite said.
I don’t know where this can lead. I Don’t know what I’m asking….

Candace’s hands were cold. Marguerite remembered that. She remembered the cold hands; her friend was frightened. Marguerite dropped the hands, and as soon as she did so Candace turned away.

I think I hear Renata
, she said, though the house was silent.

You don’t want me
, Marguerite said.

I don’t even know what those words mean
, Candace said.
What are you asking me for? You’re upset about Porter. He hurt you. You asked me to come and here I am. What else do you want me to say?

You don’t feel the same way that I do
. Marguerite said.

What way is that?
Candace said.
Are you saying you’re in love with me?

Marguerite looked at herself in the mirror. The short hair now. She was a stranger to herself. What
was
she saying? Did she want to take Candace to bed, do things neither of them could imagine? Did love fall into categories, or was it a continuum? Were there right ways to love and wrong ways, or was there just love and its object?

I can’t help the way I feel
, Marguerite said.

You don’t know how you feel. Right? Porter hurt you. You’re confused. Aren’t you confused?

I don’t feel confused
, Marguerite said.
I’m as sure about this as I’ve been about anything in my whole life. Since the second I met you, when you kissed me. I thought you were Porter’s lover, but you kissed me
.

I kissed you
, Candace said quickly,
because I knew we were going to be friends
.

Friends, yes. But more than friends. The hundreds of dinners, their mingled laughter, the walk through the moors, the winter evenings by the fire, the trip to Morocco. Candace there, that was all Marguerite had ever wanted.

It’s been since the second I met you
, Marguerite said.
This feeling
.

You’re upset, Daisy. You don’t know what you’re saying
.

You don’t feel the same way
, Marguerite said.
I’m an idiot to think you would. You have Dan. Dan and Renata. You belong to them
.