Between Husbands and Friends (25 page)

“Let’s go see Dad!” Margaret suggested.

“Good idea.” I turned into the lot and parked next to my husband’s van.

The door was unlocked. We went in. The newsroom was empty, all computers quiet and dark. The light was on in Max’s office, but we could see through the glass wall that the room was empty.

“I know where he is!” Margaret whispered to me. “Let’s surprise him!” And she raced away from me, zigzagging around the desks toward the room at the back that had been turned into a staff lounge. Before I could think to stop her, she pulled open the door and called, “Hi, Daddy!”

Max was standing with his arms around a young blond woman.

“Daddy Daddy Daddy!” Margaret cried, launching herself at his legs.

The blond woman turned and smiled at Margaret. She was breathtakingly beautiful. Max looked startled, disoriented, like a drunk suddenly sobered.

“Magpie!” He squatted and lifted her up into his arms.

She wrapped her slim arms around her father’s neck, and settled her bum firmly on his forearm. “Daddy, Mommy took me to eat at the Jared Coffin House! And she bought me a pink Little Pony! And Abby had diarrhea all over
everything
! When are you coming to Nantucket?”

Max laughed, and the way he looked at his daughter sent a wash of balm through my body: He loved her. He did love her. “You want me to come to Nantucket to see Abby’s
diarrhea?” he asked, kidding.

“
No
, Daddy.” Margaret giggled, flirting with her father.

The young blond woman was ill at ease. She stood at awkward attention, crossing her arms over her chest, then letting them hang at her sides, as if not quite sure what to do.

I waited just inside the door.

“Hey, Vivienne,” Max said. “This is my daughter, Margaret.”

“Hello, Margaret,” Vivienne said, smiling. “Pretty dress.”

“And I’m Lucy,” I said, stepping forward. “Max’s wife.”

“Hello, Lucy.” Her smile was strained.

“Vivienne’s our newest hotshot reporter,” Max told me. “Just graduated from NYU.”

I was wearing shorts and sneakers—loose, comfortable clothing for driving and carrying groceries in the heat. Vivienne wore a tight blue top, skintight black slacks, and clunky high-heeled black shoes. Her waist looked about as wide as my wrist. Her breasts rode high and firm, pointing out from her chest like ice cream cones.

“I hope you don’t find it too boring in our little suburban town,” I said to Vivienne.

“I’m sure I won’t,” she replied, still smiling.

Margaret took her father’s face in her hands and turned it toward hers. “I
missed
you, Daddy,” she said. “Mommy can’t play the snorkel game as good as you and she won’t carry me on the beach when I get tired like you do. It’s not fun without you.” Tears glimmered on the edge of her lashes as she patted his jaw. “I haven’t had a sandpaper kiss
forever
!”

“Well, you’ll get one tonight,” Max promised. He lifted his daughter up onto his shoulders. Margaret squealed and clutched at his hair.

“I brought some Bartlett’s tomatoes,” I said.

“And blueberries!” Margaret added.

Vivienne said, “I guess I’d better go. Nice meeting you, Margaret, Lucy. See you tomorrow, Max.”

“Matthew and I did a
one-hundred-piece
jigsaw puzzle!” Margaret yammered as we headed outside. “Can I ride in the van with you, Daddy?”

With the exception of the color of her hair, Margaret looked exactly like her father, and when she
grew older, it was possible that her hair would grow darker; then she would look exactly like him. I had always known that Margaret loved me, but she worshipped her father. She understood me, because I was female, but she adored her precious father, and from about age three she had developed exceedingly feminine wiles to keep him captivated with her.

Perhaps it was that simple, total, innocent adoration that Max needed. Or perhaps he needed to be drawn down sharply into the immediate world, the child’s world, when
now
is what counts and the mind doesn’t race ahead to worry about tomorrow. Max and Margaret were nearly inseparable that evening, joking, talking, eating, helping with the dishes. She sat on his lap as they watched television. When she got drowsy, Max carried her up to bed, helped her brush her teeth and put on a nightgown, read her a story, kissed her good night.

I turned off all the lights downstairs. Upstairs, I slid a silk nightgown on over my head, and went into the smallest bedroom, the one next to Margaret’s.

The nursery. We had wallpapered it in green and yellow and set up the crib. I had washed soft cotton sheets and put them on the mattress. I had folded soft yellow blankets at the end of the mattress. We had hung the mobile Margaret had gazed at above the crib. I had washed and put away in waiting the tiny white undershirts and booties and terry cloth sleepers.

Flush with the success of the newspaper and our lives, Max and I had gone on a shopping spree for the new baby. On the white bureau next to the crib was a beautiful light, shaped like a carousel. I didn’t turn the light on but sat in the dark room where moonlight fell through the window in a gentle luminous glow, the leaves of the wild cherry tree shadowed in black tracery on the carpet and wall.

I sat in the rocking chair. In this chair I had nursed Margaret. I had sat here for hours on end comforting her, holding her, nursing her, singing her lullabies.

I heard Max leave Margaret’s room. I heard the muffled thud of his feet as he went down the stairs. Was he looking for me? Or was he going to his study, to hide from me.

What is a marriage? What holds a marriage together? For some people, I know, it is the passion, the connection between man and woman that is of ultimate importance, and children are loved and nurtured, but secondary to the alliance between man and wife. Sometimes the marriage and even the family are about the man’s career, advancing it in politics or academics or the corporate world, amassing wealth and prestige. In other cases, the entire marriage is about the children, having them, devoting time and energy to raising and supporting them.

What was our marriage about?

Max and I had been married so young. Just one moment out of college. We had thought
we would change the world, at least a piece of it, a small town’s worth, and we were doing that. We’d talked about that much, about Max’s desire to run a newspaper, to be part of the life of a small town. We’d just assumed we’d have children.

Not until this week had Max told me how enormously and desperately he wanted a son, and I was still trying to absorb that information. It was shocking, the thought that my husband had kept such a significant secret from me for all these years. What other secrets had he kept? Was he keeping? In marriage, is a secret a lie?

I leaned my head back against the firm wooden support of the rocking chair and closed my eyes, trying to remember. It seemed to me that Max had been genuinely and completely thrilled with Margaret when she was born. With a daughter. I could envision his face, the radiance and awe that lighted his tear-streaked cheeks.

“My little girl,” he had said, as the nurse put the naked newborn in his arms. “Hello, Beauty.”

What was he thinking now? Was he contemplating leaving me for the slender Vivienne? Putting a baby into her brand-new capable body? Having a son with her? Had he thought so far ahead that he envisioned our divorce, and joint custody, and Margaret running to him on weekends the way she had run to him tonight?

His own parents were divorced. It had been hard for him. I was certain he would think long and hard before he inflicted that on his daughter.

“Lucy?” Max stood in the doorway.

I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked quietly.

We hadn’t set foot in this room for weeks, months. It had been a room for the past, for death, for grief.

“This is a pretty room,” I said. “I’d forgotten that the branches of the tree brush the window.”

Max stood just at the door, not inside the room.

I rose. “Come in,” I said. “Sit in this chair. It’s so comfortable.”

Max hesitated, then entered. He sat in the chair. Rested his arms along the arms of the
chair. “It is comfortable.” He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes.

I leaned against the crib. The house was quiet except for the familiar, tranquil hum of the central air in the basement. No wind stirred the leaves of the tree outside. The room was dark. We were ghosts to each other, strangers, our skin and clothing black and white.

I lifted my nightgown up over my head and let it fall on the floor at my feet. Max opened his eyes; I saw the liquid gleam.

He looked at me for a while, then started to get up, but I crossed the little room and bent over him and pushed him back down in the chair. I unzipped his shorts and brought out his penis, which, to my infinite relief and delight, was lovely and hard. I don’t care, I thought, if this hardness is caused by lust for Vivienne or secret appetites I know nothing about, this is mine now, and I will have it.

The rocking chair was wide, the bottom covered with a cushion, and I was grateful for that cushion as I maneuvered myself onto my husband, resting my knees on either side of his hips, supporting myself with my hands on the arms of the chair. Max’s hands fastened onto my hips, and he pushed me down onto him, hard. The rocking chair swayed beneath us. Our bodies were silver in the moonlight. I tightened the muscles of my vagina, clenching him inside me, and very slowly I moved up and down. Max groaned. He put his hands on my breasts. I moved more quickly. The rocking chair creaked beneath our weight. Max put his hands on my shoulders, shoving me down as hard as he could, so that his penis speared up inside me, pushing up further than it had ever gone before. I whimpered with pain, and with pleasure. Over Max’s shoulder, through half-closed eyes, I saw a breeze stir the leaves of the wild cherry tree. With a moan, Max climaxed, his fingers digging into my shoulders. The leaves of the wild cherry tree shuddered. I moaned, too.

Max put his hands on my face and brought my mouth to his, and kissed me like a thirsting man who has found water. I kissed him back, fervently, like a woman who has returned home.

Max blinks. “Chip? What do you mean?”

I can’t speak. I am so frightened. I’m afraid I’m going to die of fear. My body is made of ice. I stare at my husband, and tears stream down my face.

Max frowns, then rocks back, as if I’ve hit him. “What exactly are you saying, Lucy?”

My hands rise to cover my mouth, as if my body is fighting to hold back these words.

“Do you remember the summer Margaret was seven?”

“I can’t hear you.”

I force my hands down into my lap. They hold on to each other tightly. “The summer Margaret was seven …”

“Of course I remember it.”

I’ve got to go through with this. I clear my throat. “Wait, now, Max, please. Help me with this. I want you really to remember it, how it was that summer.”

“If you mean that I was depressed and morbid and remote and a shit, all right, I remember, and you are saying
what
? That because of that, you slept with Chip?”

Digging my fingers into my palms, miserably, I nod.

Max’s face flushes scarlet. “I don’t believe it.”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

“You
couldn’t.
You couldn’t sleep with him and then let me, let us
all
go on as if nothing happened. Jesus Christ, Lucy, tell me you didn’t do that.”

I look at my husband.

“Tell me!” Max leans forward, grabs my shoulders, and gives me one quick hard shake, as if to dislodge the words from my throat. When I still don’t speak, he lets go of me, rises, and paces around the bed. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Let me get this straight. You and Chip had an affair that summer, and for six years after that you’ve been making fools of me and Kate—”

“It wasn’t an affair. Not really, Max. We only were together—”

Max stops. Stares at me, dead white. “You’re saying that Jeremy is not my son.”

“Might not be.”

“Jeremy is Chip’s son.”