Leaving Haven (27 page)

She always broke first, pushing the book across the table, twisting in her chair to look up at him, reaching up to pull his face down to hers, his lips against her own. They would shed their clothes as they moved toward the bedroom, where Duncan would push her down onto the bed and admire her for a moment in the light that spilled in from the kitchen and the streetlamps outside. Then he would lean forward and cup his warm hand around one of her breasts, put his mouth to her other breast, caress her with his hands and tongue before lowering himself on top of her. She had never felt so adored—at least, not until John.

She flushed now thinking about John, but with guilt, not desire. She closed her eyes and lay back on her towel in the sand, under the blazing June sun. She wished the sun could scorch John's touch from her skin, his memory from her brain.

“You're going to get burned.”

She put a hand over her forehead to shade her eyes and looked up at Duncan, who stood next to her, dripping.

“I have sunscreen on. SPF five thousand, I think.”

He didn't smile. She sat up.

“I'm going to take the girls to play some games on the boardwalk,” he said. “Get them out of the sun.”

“Okay.” She stood and gathered up her book, the spray bottles of sunscreen, the bottles of water, her hat.

“You don't need to come,” Duncan said. “You hate the boardwalk.”

Alice looked at him in surprise. “I'll come.”

He shook his head. “Stay. You can read, or go for a walk on the beach. Take a break.”

He wore a blue Washington Nationals baseball cap and his sunglasses, and Alice couldn't read his eyes.
Does he really think I deserve a break?
she thought.
Or does he just not want to be with me?
She had no idea. She stood there, uncertain, but before she could figure it out, her husband turned, yelled out to the girls, and headed off down the beach away from her, until the three of them—Duncan and Wren and her friend—were lost in the crowd, and Alice was alone.

T
HAT
NIGHT
A
LICE
and Duncan sat in the sunroom of their little rental apartment, drinking margaritas, watching the sky turn pink above the treetops, above the ocean two blocks away. Wren and Nicole were in their room watching a movie on the laptop. Alice took a long swig of her drink and worked up all her courage. It was easier here in the fading light, with the changing sky beyond the windows, something to watch.

“So do you really want a divorce?” she said. Her words hung in the humid air, still and heavy.

A long silence. “Do you?” he said.

It hadn't occurred to her that the choice could be hers. “No,” she said.

The sky outside the windows darkened to deep indigo, lightening to lavender and pink just above the horizon, where the sun had disappeared. She heard people laughing on the street outside, the sound of the waves in the distance, the slam of a car door. She couldn't see Duncan's face in the half dark. She looked out the window at the silhouette of the trees black against the sky.

“I've never done anything out of passion in my whole life,” Alice said. “I've been mature and responsible since I was four. And the bullying with Wren—it made me so angry; I didn't know what to do with all that
feeling
. And you seemed so calm about it.”

“It bothered me,” Duncan said, from the shadows of his chair. “Of course it bothered me.”

“But you didn't show it.”

“You think
I've
never done anything out of passion in my whole life, except punch John Bing in the face,” Duncan said. “But when
I
needed something more, something to make me feel more alive—because, believe me, you're not the only person who feels that way—I found a new job. I looked for that in my career, not in another person.”

Duncan's voice was even, but Alice felt his words as a slap.

“But that was part of it,” Alice said. “You changed jobs like that, without even talking to me about it—it made me feel like I wasn't even part of your life.” She shifted in her chair to face him, leaned forward. “And the money—you know how that scares me, having to always worry about having enough to pay the bills, living on noodles like I had to when I was young. You could have talked to me about it first. I wouldn't have stopped you, or discouraged you, but we could have planned for it, been partners.”

“You're right,” Duncan said. “I should have talked it over with you. But I'm forty-two and I'd been working at Covington for sixteen years and it felt like being trapped in an elevator I didn't want to be on.”

A light went on in the living room behind them, the girls making popcorn in the kitchen. Alice started to stand up, but Duncan said, “Sit down. They can't hear us.”

“Anyway,” he said, “when David called me about the job with the Innocence Project I was already feeling restless; you knew that. I met him for lunch and I said yes on the spot.” He paused. “It was impulsive; it wasn't like me.” He looked at her and raised his eyebrows.

She nodded. How many times in the last month had she apologized for her affair, how many times had she said,
I'm sorry; it was impulsive; it wasn't like me
?

“This job has changed things for me,” Duncan said. “I love what I do, and it matters.” His voice grew soft. “You know I've been working since last September on this Dan Boyle case. The guy has been in jail for
nineteen years
. And it's stunning, how his case has been bungled. It's like I have a moral obligation to set it right. What I do now isn't about money; it's about someone's
life.
”

“I know,” she said. “It was just so sudden.”

“We've been married fourteen years,” he said. “I guess I thought you knew how desperate I was to get out of Covington; I thought you understood.” He cleared his throat. “I should have talked to you. Honestly, I panicked. I started to feel like my entire life was set: associate, then partner, then senior partner at Covington, the same cases and coworkers and Christmas parties for the next thirty years. You've always been so supportive, I didn't think . . .” His voice trailed off.

Duncan had messed up; he was trying to say that now. Steady, reliable, consistent, predictable Duncan had felt trapped, had wanted more, had acted on impulse. He was imperfect, too.

“I felt trapped, too,” she said, “but not by you. By me—by how I'd lived my whole life. I don't know; I can't explain it even to myself.”

He sighed.

“Do you really want a divorce?” she said, very low.

“I don't know,” he said. “It's too soon.”

The door from the living room opened, spilling light into the darkened sunroom where they sat. The girls tumbled in, laughing about the movie. Alice got up to finish cleaning up the kitchen, and Duncan moved into the living room, to read on the sofa by the lamp.

Later that night in bed, Alice reached out for him in the dark. She ran her hand along his cheek and leaned forward and kissed him, a tentative touch of her lips against his. He kissed her back. She inched closer and wrapped her arms around him, nuzzled his jaw with her nose. She felt the muscles in his shoulders grow tense under her hands, felt his back stiffen.

“I can't, Alice,” he said, breaking away, rolling back toward his side of the bed. “I'm sorry. I'm not there yet.”

Guilt washed over her. She rolled onto her side, her back to him. She held herself very still. She heard a rustle of sheets, felt Duncan press himself against her back, wrap his arm around her, spoon her.

“Let's just sleep,” he said.

She pushed her body against his, relaxed into his embrace. And for that moment, it was enough.

19

Georgia

June 20–22, 2012

G
eorgia awoke to the sweet song of a white-throated sparrow. She felt the warmth and brightness of the morning even before she opened her eyes. She was on her back—it felt so good to sleep on her back again after all those months of being so huge!—and she shifted and rolled over onto her side.

“Oh, my God,” she said aloud. Her milk had come in. Her breasts, which were a respectable C-cup when she wasn't pregnant and had ballooned to the size of cantaloupes over the last month, now looked like watermelons ready to burst. As she looked down, she felt a familiar tingle and her milk let down, soaking through her T-shirt and dripping onto the sheets and the mattress.

Of course, she began to cry. She got out of bed, pulled her T-shirt off, and slipped on a plaid flannel bathrobe of her father's that she found hanging on a hook by the bedroom door. Since his death four years ago, she and her sisters had left the cabin as it was, full of Frank's clothes and fishing gear and baseball caps. None of them were ready to be orphans, and at the cabin—that timeless place—they could still pretend Frank was just out fishing, or in town getting the newspapers, chatting up the checkout girl at the Grand Union. They had scattered his ashes across the lake one night, out in a rowboat under a sky full of stars.

Georgia walked into the kitchen, leaned over, and expressed as much milk as she could into the sink, crying the whole time. As she did it she realized that expressing the milk just meant that her body would produce
more
milk, that she'd be trapped here forever, producing milk and pouring it down the drain. She had forgotten how difficult and messy these first few days were. The sheer volume of milk stunned her. But if she didn't express it her breasts would hurt so much she couldn't stand it, at least not now.

She slipped into the bathroom and took a long, hot shower, silently blessing Polly for convincing them to install the new hot-water heater last summer, washing the salt from her face, the tangles from her hair, and the aches from her body. She pulled on those same damn maternity capris and maternity bra and her father's sweatshirt, and walked out to the shed where her father's truck was parked. Glenn had clearly taken care of the truck when he'd opened the cabin, because it was clean and shiny and started the minute she turned the key in the ignition. She drove into town, where she bought a few groceries and a large cup of coffee, since she could have caffeine again. She bought a bottle of wine, too. She kept her sunglasses on and her father's fishing cap, the red one he used to wear all summer long to keep the sun off his head, and didn't see anyone she knew.

By the time she drove back up the driveway to the cabin, she felt calmer. She stepped out of the car. The sun warmed her skin, and a light breeze lifted her hair and blew a few wild strands across her face. The sharp, reassuring smell of balsam permeated the air, and she could hear the buzzing of insects in the trees. She picked up the bag of groceries and walked past the front steps and around to the side of the screened porch, so she could put the wine into the porch fridge on her way to the kitchen. As she walked she saw a large bird skim across the surface of the lake and squinted to get a better view—a heron, coming in to fish among the shallows at the edge of the bay. She stood for a moment watching the bird and marveling at the length of its giant wingspan, remembering last July when she had been here with Alice and Duncan and John and the girls, aglow with love for Alice and the incredible, selfless gift she was offering to Georgia.

They had both started on the pill that week, to synchronize their cycles. Georgia knew how much Alice hated to take medication, to put anything artificial into her body, and yet Alice had made light of it all, joking about her swollen breasts, her bloated abdomen, her mood swings. “It's not me, it's the hormones,” she would say with a laugh, an excuse for any lapse in good humor, memory, attention. But at the same time, she had eschewed all alcohol, even a glass of wine; insisted on driving all the way to Ticonderoga for groceries because she could get organic milk there; and started meditating for ten minutes a day—something she absolutely hated to do—because she wanted to reduce the stress hormones in her blood, all so she could produce the best possible eggs for Georgia. Georgia felt a tenderness toward Alice that she had only ever felt for Liza and, years before, for motherless baby Chessy.

That had been their best vacation together, last summer. Duncan and John had always been uneasy comrades; Wren and Liza were growing apart as they entered adolescence; but Georgia and Alice, the glue that held it all together, were closer and happier than ever, and their gaiety and ease with each other washed over all of them.

They would head out in the big boat every day, all six of them, and zoom to the middle of the lake, where the girls would leap overboard and climb onto the big yellow inner tube John tossed out for them. They would zip around the lake with the girls on the tube behind them, skimming over the surface of the water, screaming for John to do “the whip”—cut the boat hard so the tube shot out sideways. It made Alice nervous to watch—more than once Georgia caught her giving John a look of fear and almost contempt, as though she thought he was not to be trusted with Wren's safety—but then she would relax and flash that brilliant smile at Georgia.