Between Husbands and Friends (27 page)

“No. It wasn’t that at all.” Although as I speak I wonder if I’m lying. It might have been that, partly. It might have been jealousy, spite. I’m capable of that. “The point is. The point … Jeremy might be Chip’s son.”

Chip opens his eyes.

Kate just stares at me. She says: “No.”

“We don’t
know
that Jeremy is Chip’s son,” I continue. “Just that it’s possible. It’s just as likely that Max is Jeremy’s genetic father.”

“You slept with them both the same day?”

“Not quite the same day. Jesus, it doesn’t matter now, Kate.”

“Oh, I think it matters.”

“The point is, the way cystic fibrosis works, it can only strike a child if
both
parents carry the gene. So Chip, or Max, or both, carries the gene. Chip has to be tested for the cystic fibrosis gene. Max, too.”

Chip asks, “And if I carry the gene?”

“Then there’s a chance that Matthew and Abby carry it as well.”

“Oh, God,” Kate cries.

I hastily say, “Kate, they can’t develop cystic fibrosis unless
you
also carry the gene. I don’t know if I can explain it clearly. I can hardly absorb it all myself. The gene hides. It
lurks.
But we have to find out. If Matthew and Abby do carry the gene, and they marry someone who also carries the gene, their children will have something like a twenty-five percent chance of having cystic fibrosis.”

Kate puts both hands to her face. The room fills with a powerful silence.

After a while Chip clears his throat. “It’s possible that Max has it and I don’t.”

“Right.”

Kate lifts her head. “So you should have Max tested. If he has it, then Chip doesn’t.”

“Not necessarily. I’ve thought about this all day, Kate. I didn’t want to do this. The thing is, if Max is tested, and if he does carry the gene, there is still the possibility that Chip also carries the gene. If he does, then Matthew and Abby might carry it. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t insist that Chip be tested.”

“Let me see if I’m getting this right,” Kate says slowly. “If Chip carries the gene, and Max doesn’t, then Chip is Jeremy’s father.”

I reply, “And if Max carries the gene, and Chip doesn’t, then Max is Jeremy’s father. But if they both carry the gene, then we’ll run DNA tests to know.”

“You should have come to me in private,” Chip says.

“Right,” Kate remarks, her voice hollow. She doesn’t look at him. “Then you and Lucy could keep one more secret from me and Max.”

“Kate—”

“So let me get this straight.” Kate holds up her fingers, counting. “You’re telling me tonight that first, you had an affair with my husband seven years ago, and God knows how many times over the summers since—”

“Never since, I swear,” I tell her.

She gives out a jagged laugh. “Yeah, well, I sure do believe you, Lucy. Second, there’s a chance that Jeremy is not Max’s son, but is Chip’s. Third, my two children might carry the cystic
fibrosis gene, and their children might be at risk.”

“And fourth, Kate,” I said quietly, “the one thing we know for sure. Jeremy has cystic fibrosis.”

Chip asks, “How do we get tested?”

I tell him, “It’s simple. You go to a lab. They brush some cells off the inside of your cheek. It takes thirty seconds. They send it off and you know in two or three weeks.”

“Two or three weeks,” Kate echoes.

“Jeremy doesn’t know any of this. Not yet.”

“Poor little boy,” Kate whispers. She looks up at me. “And what if Chip is his father? What will you do then?”

“I don’t know. I can’t think that far ahead. We’ve got to pray that Max is his genetic father. If he is, then perhaps Chip is all right. I mean, he can be tested, and perhaps he doesn’t carry the gene, and then your family is all right, home free.”

“No.” Kate’s face is drawn and pale. “I wouldn’t say that, Lucy.”

“But healthy.”

“You know, Lucy, I can understand your sleeping with Chip. What I don’t understand is how you could keep it secret from me for all these years. How you could lie to me.”

I stare at Kate. “I guess I’ve gotten pretty good at lying,” I say.

A cold moment of dead silence hits the air, as if the oxygen has suddenly disappeared from the room. Then Kate bristles. “Are you threatening me?”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

Chip says, “Threatening her?”

“Because you know what?” Kate stands up. She’s trembling all over. Anger has broken through the shock. “I don’t care. You can tell Chip about Garrison. You can tell him about my little summer flings. You can tell him every secret I’ve ever told you. God.” She laughs, and at the same time tears well in her eyes. “For all I know, you already have!”

“Kate.” I reach out my hand. “I haven’t told him anything.”

“Told me what?” Chip demands.

“I thought I could trust you!” Kate cries, looking at me. “I thought you were my best friend.”

“Kate …”

“And you!” She turns on her husband. “You have always tried to make me be different than I am. You have always insisted that I pretend to be better than I am, some cardboard figure
of perfection. How could you do that? When all along you were sleeping with Lucy?”

“It wasn’t all along, Kate. It was just twice.”

“You have been so pompous! So pretentious! Such a hypocrite! Both of you! I compared myself to you, I tried to live up to you, and all along you’ve both been liars and adulterers!”

“Just that one summer, Kate. Just twice that summer.”

Kate looks around the room so wild-eyed that I’m afraid she’s searching for something to throw. She surprises me completely when she announces, “I’m leaving.” She crosses the living room.

“Kate,” I say sensibly, “you can’t get off the island this late at night.” She doesn’t reply.

Chip says, “What about the children?”

She turns to look at her husband. “You deal with them.”

“But what shall I tell them you’re doing?”

“Tell them I’m going to Garrison’s,” she says, and rushes from the room and up the stairs.

Chip follows her, leaving me alone in the room.

Twenty minutes later, just before midnight, the taxi arrives. Kate’s face is pinched as she comes down the stairs, a suitcase in each hand. Chip follows, looking drained, ill. He leaves the door open and follows her out into the street. The interior light of the large van shines on Kate’s blond hair as she settles in. Chip speaks to her. Grimly, she replies. The car door slams. The taxi pulls away from the house.

Chip returns to the house, closing the door behind him quietly. We stare at each other as if from across a great distance. His eyes are full of sorrow, confusion, and something else … concern? Affection? If he tries to embrace me in an attempt at consolation, I will die of shame.

“Dear God, Lucy, what a terrible mess we’re in.” He moves toward me.

Even speaking with him like this seems a betrayal of Kate and Max, but my heart is so full that it’s all I can do to choke out: “We can’t—”

He stops dead. Nods, clears his throat. “I’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

Tears steam down my face. “All right.”

“If you want me to take Matthew and Abby back to Sussex, I will.”

“Leave them. It will be better for all of them.”

“I’ll arrange to take the test as soon as possible.”

“Thank you.”

“I’m sorry about Jeremy.”

“I know.”

“Do you want—” His forehead furrows with pain and puzzlement. He doesn’t know what to offer. But his eyes search mine.

I look at this man. Even now, at this terrible moment when my whole being is scourged with self-loathing, my eyes take pleasure in the sight of him, and something deep in my soul is satisfied. I have sailed with Chip to Tuckernuck. We have made love. I have succumbed to the dazzle and lure of an attraction as deeply beautiful and mysterious as the pull of the tides. I let myself be swept away, and I loved the sensation of surrender, of being
taken.
All my life I’ve resisted this force; I’ve been afraid of it. I’ve been right to be afraid of it. Look where it has taken me. Worse: Look where it has taken our children. Our families. My friends.

“I just need to sleep,” I say.

“Will you …”

“I picked up a prescription for sleeping pills on the Cape.”

“Good.”

I turn my back and climb the stairs, hurrying toward the necessary oblivion, the silent numbing dark.

I will never know what happened between Max and the lovely young Vivienne. I did ask him. He retorted brusquely, “Nothing happened, for God’s sake!” But his face flushed and he didn’t look me in the eye. Perhaps he didn’t actually sleep with her. But
something
happened, if only in his mind. And whatever it was, it was enough to scare him, the way my brief entanglement—for it happened so quickly it could never be called an affair—scared me.

And stimulated me. No doubt about it, what had happened between Chip and me had been a kind of gift, reminding me of life’s various delights. Reminding me of life: the pleasures of the senses, the good luck of what I had, who I loved. All at once I saw how wonderful my husband was, how infinitely amazing my daughter. I had not seen them clearly for the past few months; they had been distanced from me by a veil of grief. Now I wanted to love them the way they deserved to be loved.

Perhaps Vivienne did the same for Max. I think it’s possible. Whatever happened between them, it worked as an emotional jump-start for Max. Of course I was jealous, and if I let myself dwell on his possible infidelity for very long, I could send myself into a rage. But I’d rather have Max unfaithful than lost in a cold despair.

That night, when I came home from Nantucket with Margaret and seduced my husband in the nursery of our home, marked the beginning of a new kind of relationship between Max and me. It was as if we were falling in love all over again. Getting to know each other for the first time. Perhaps it was simply that Max had considered divorce and had contemplated the consequences, the damage that would be done to his daughter, the chaos it would bring down onto our lives. As I had considered, and turned away from it.

Margaret and I stayed in Sussex with Max until the last few days in August, then we packed up the Volvo and headed back to Nantucket. The Cunninghams were still in residence and they agreed to stay on for another day and night so that the M&Ms could have one last golden seaside day together. Then they would pack up and head back home.

The night before they left, we celebrated our annual “Big Lobster Night.” Usually this
came at the beginning of the summer, when we had just settled into our vacations. At the beginning of this summer the thought of any kind of celebration had been impossible for me. But now I was, if not mended, mending; I was back on the side of light and laughter and hope.

I was the one who said, “We haven’t had our Big Lobster Night. Let’s have it tomorrow.”

All the windows in the rambling old house were thrown wide open, and the white cotton kitchen curtains filled and fell with the gentle breeze that brought in the tang of sea air and the calls of birds settling in the apple trees and in the tangled thickets surrounding the house.

The men, including Matthew, had gone off to “Hunt the Giant Lobster,” while the women stayed behind to set the dining room table, make an enormous salad, and start the huge pots of water boiling. Baby Abby sat in a canvas swing chair, her head nesting on her chins, bright eyes watching the rest of us.

The front door slammed.

“Here they are!” Margaret shrieked with excitement and a little real terror. The sight of the hideous lobsters always unnerved her.

“Women, the hunt was successful!” Chip bellowed as he entered the kitchen, beating his chest with one hand, holding up the bag of lobsters with the other. Max followed with more lobsters.

“They went like this!” Matthew told us in his high little boy’s voice, and he snapped his thumbs and fingers together as if they were claws, stretching them toward Margaret.

“Eeeek!” Margaret screamed, and raced from the room.

Matthew giggled and chased after her.

“All right, Women, let the Men do their work!” Max and Chip lifted the lids off the huge pots, and steam roiled up into the warm air.

They were dressed alike in khaki shorts, polo shirts and ancient, time-honored Docksiders. Chip was taller than Max by a good four inches, and he had an enviable thatch of thick blond hair, while my husband’s dark curls were receding. But Max was just as handsome, and he enjoyed life more, and was a better person. He had more integrity. He cared about the state of the world; Chip pretty much only cared about making money. I was fond of Chip, but what had happened between us had been insignificant. No one needed to know; it was almost as if it had never happened. Let the universe fold over it like a wave over a ripple in the tide. It was over. It was gone.

“Ladies, start your shucking,” Kate said.

Kate and I sat at the round kitchen table, each with a brown paper bag at our feet, pulling
the rough green husks and the silken threads off the fresh butter-and-sugar corn. It was one of the rules of Big Lobster Night that the corn wouldn’t be husked until the last possible moment.