Mating for Life (14 page)

Later still, she picked it out and shoved it to the back of a drawer. It was starting to disintegrate.

Finally, hours later, she made a decision. She took the magazine out of the drawer. She called Helen. “How
are
you?” Helen asked in the way that she always asked it, even though Liane hadn't called her back in weeks, even though she had hardly explained any of what was happening in her life to her mother. There was no accusation about any of that in ­Helen's tone. There was just the expectation that Liane would tell Helen how she really was. Helen never expected people, especially not her daughters, to just say
Fine
or
Good
or
Okay
when she asked how they were.

“I'm . . .” Liane couldn't explain how she was to any degree of satisfaction, so she avoided it. “I'm wondering if you have Iain's phone number,” she said, as casually as possible. “You know, that man who now owns the old Bachman place? The guy with the greens.” “Oh, I know who he is,” Helen replied, her tone different now, less inviting. “May I ask why you need it?” “It's . . . I have a question about greens.” “A question about greens,” Helen repeated, but Liane didn't elaborate. “Well, I do have his number. This is his cell, so wherever he is, you should be able to reach him.” Liane wrote down the number. “Thanks, Helen. I'm sorry I can't talk. This is kind of important. But I'll call you back, okay?” “Please do. I miss you. I worry about you. And . . . could you please tell Iain I said hello?”

“Sure.”

“Actually, no. Don't. Don't, okay?”

“Oh-
kay
. 'Bye.”

Iain picked up right away. She felt embarrassed and shy and also realized she had no plan. What exactly was she going to ask him? How was she going to explain this? “Hello, Iain,
it's Liane here,” she said, realizing if she didn't say something he was going to hang up. “Liane, Helen's daughter, we met this summer?”

“Of course I remember you,” he said, his tone warm. “How
are
you?”

“Good. Fine. Yeah. So, thank you. It's just . . . that you seemed to have a pretty good handle on island goings-on and I was . . .” She trailed off.
What? I have a crush on a married man and am wondering if you think there's any chance he has marriage problems?

“Hello?”

“Hi. Sorry. Hi. Okay. So you know that couple who rented out the Castersens' place this summer? That man you said was a writer?” She thought quickly, and found a place to start. “I wanted to buy his book, the one you were talking about, about the end of the world . . . and I was wondering if you could just confirm his name for me.”

“Laurence Gibbons.”

“Laurence Gibbons. And is he . . . are they still renting the cottage, or . . . I guess they've gone back to the city by now, right . . . ?”

“Actually, no. It appears Laurence has moved into the cottage. I have no idea when he plans to leave, but I keep telling him the lake will freeze eventually and he'll have to take a snowmobile out to the mainland if he wants to leave.”

“He's still there?”

“Oh, yes. And all by himself, for the most part. We've taken to having coffee from time to time, and it turns out we're both bachelors. His girls are still coming up some weekends, and he goes back to the city, but the wife—well, apparently she's no longer his wife.”

Liane's mouth had gone completely dry. “Oh,” she finally managed. “And he's still there?”

“Yes. Still here.”

“On the island.”

“That's right.”

“I have to go,” she said. “Thank you for this information. I'm . . . I'm really looking forward to buying his book.”

He cleared his throat. “Could you . . . tell your mother I said hello?”

“Definitely. She says hi, too,” Liane said, figuring it would probably be okay to tell him that now that he had asked her to extend a greeting to Helen. Strange behavior on both of their parts, but Liane didn't have time to think about it.

She hung up. She looked around her lonely apartment and back down at the burnt and waterlogged magazine in her hand.

And she made another decision without consulting anyone.

part two

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

—
ANAÏS NIN,
DELTA OF VENUS

8

Barn Owl
(
Tyto alba
)

The barn owl does not have a specific breeding season; it mainly depends on food supply. To attract the female, the male barn owl uses a special call. He also hovers in front of the female to show off his chest and belly. This is called the moth flight. During courtship, the male and female hoot and chase each other while in flight. Though some owls are monogamous, the barn owl may have different partners to produce several broods.

H
im: “Fiona. This can't go on forever. You won't speak to me, except when the boys are around. And you think this pretending is fooling them but it isn't. No one in this house is happy. We have to talk about this.”

Her: “You lied to me. You've been lying to me our entire lives.”

Him: “I told you . . . I told you I had my reasons. I told you I was
sorry
.”

Her: “And having your reasons and being sorry doesn't change anything. Yet somehow you expect me to be fine with it, to forgive you and allow you to—let this
situation
become a normal part of our lives.”

Him: “Please stop referring to this as a ‘situation.' Please stop refusing to say her name. She's a person.”

Her: “I still don't understand why you won't fly over there and insist on a paternity test. Then maybe we could finally put all this behind us.”

Him: “You're being incredibly cruel.”

Her (beginning to retreat): “Oh, yes. That's right, why would you need a paternity test?
You've
always known. You just decided not to tell
me
. Please, just go away. I can't talk to you. I don't
want
to talk to you.”

Him: “You can't shut me out forever.”

Her:
Slams door.

Fiona had lost count of how many times Tim had said, “You can't shut me out forever,” to her in the preceding five months. And she was beginning to believe he was very wrong—she probably could shut him out forever. Some things just became habit. But then, the day before, he had told her he was no longer going to stand for it.
He
had said that to
her
. It made her realize it was what she should have said in the first place, if it was how she really felt. She should have said,
You have made my life into something I never wanted it to be. You have brought into my life the very thing I have always avoided. Everything was supposed to be perfect, and now it's not, and I can't forgive you.

She was in her office, sitting at her desk, staring at the list on her blotter.
Read book for book club
was the first item.

The book club meeting was tonight, at Angela Tanner's house. Seven years in the club and she had never failed to read the book. But she had only been able to manage a few chapters of this one. The protagonist was vapid, and although the book was set in Morocco, Fiona got the feeling the author had never been there. This bothered her inordinately. The idea of spending the rest of the afternoon reading the book was unfathomable. So she crossed the item off her list, tapped at her iPad, and called up the title of the book on Amazon, then read the synopsis and a few reviews. Most of them were favorable. “People are sheep,” she said aloud. She had been
talking to herself aloud a lot lately. She hated to admit she had no one else to talk to.

There was a time when book club meetings had been one of her favorite social events. She had loved when it was her turn to host, had made it a point to outdo herself every time. The previous year, her hostessing duties had landed in the winter months and she built a fire, mulled wine and cider, braised rabbit and tucked it into phyllo cups, roasted grapes and served them with pillows of carefully selected cheese and chewy bread from the most well-known chef in town.

“It still just tastes like bread to me,” Tim had joked with her later, after everyone was gone and he had emerged from hiding in his study. She remembered that even though she valued her association with these women she had been relieved to see his familiar face at the end of the night. She could finally relax, sitting with him, discussing the night over the remains of the wine and the bread with his favorite sweet churned butter.

Fiona steeled herself against the good memories of Tim and decided to call Angela, the book club meeting hostess that evening. “I just wanted to ask if I could bring anything,” she said. “Dessert?”

“Oh, no. I've got it all under control.”

“Perfect, then.” Fiona paused and wondered what it would be like to say to Angela,
Could you meet me for a coffee? I need someone to talk to
. Instead, there were a few beats of silence. In the yard she heard the owl, hooting softly the way it did. (“Aren't owls nocturnal?” Eliot had once asked, after he learned the word in school. “Not ours, apparently,” Fiona had said.) “See you tonight, Angela,” she said, and hung up the phone.

Our
owl.

Our
house.

Our
life.

All ruined.

• • •

That night, Fiona sat on Angela's couch in her walk-out basement with its salmon-colored walls and fawn-colored rug and plush, Moroccan-style cushions everywhere, some of them covered in tiny little mirrors, gilt mirrors on the walls, vast geometric paintings.
Won't Tim laugh when I tell him it appears she actually redecorated in the theme of the book,
she thought, and then experienced that familiar drop in her spirits. She imagined what she was experiencing was similar to bereavement, the way a person who has lost someone picks up the phone to call them, then realizes they're gone and experiences the loss afresh. Perhaps she and Tim hadn't been as close as they once were—all the traveling, the long absences had taken their toll—but he had still been her confidant, the person she told those petty details to, the ones that didn't matter especially but that you had to tell
someone
.

The food was set out on a low table before the women, dates and almonds and figs and goat cheese rolled in something and doused in oil, tiny hollowed-out pumpkins filled with spiced and roasted seeds, spiced meats threaded onto skewers with mint yogurt dipping sauce. Later, Angela was bringing out tagines, she had said. Lamb and apricot and spicy vegetarian. “She doesn't make any of the food herself, you know,” whispered Nancy Wells, on Fiona's left. “The nanny does it, and Angie takes the credit.”

“Isn't that what you pay people for? To do things and let you take the credit?” Fiona said, surprised by the harsh sound of her voice. She decided to ignore Nancy and the food and focus on her wine. But eventually her glass was empty, so she looked around.

Who are these women?
She felt isolated from all of them, even though she was literally rubbing elbows with both Nancy and Johanna Edwards.
I don't even think I like most of them.
She
refilled her wineglass, thinking she'd have more than her normally self-allotted two glasses. Perhaps she'd have
three
glasses. Or had she already had three? Well, maybe she'd have four. And what was more—

“What's more,” she said aloud, realizing it was a complete non sequitur. She sounded crazy. What's more
what
? “What's more, I hated this book.”
That's what.

Jane raised an eyebrow. “Really?
Hated
it?” There was a hint of admiration in her voice.

“Yes. Hated it.”

“That's not a very constructive criticism,” said Nancy, moving her elbow away from Fiona's.

“No. I suppose not,” Fiona said. “I shouldn't say I hated
all
of it. I just hated the few chapters of it I actually managed to read.”

There was silence. No one had admitted to not reading the book before.

“
I
liked the way she accepted herself,” said Carole Huntziger. “I liked the way she didn't try to be someone she wasn't. You just knew that if she'd lived in our age, she wouldn't be running out and getting . . .
you
know, Botox or something like that. Those fillers, the ones that are supposed to plump you up but really make you look like a clown.”

“What's so wrong about getting Botox?” Fiona asked.
And don't pretend you don't know what those fillers are called. Everyone knows you had your lips done last year and pretended it was some special lipstick you bought.

“First off, it's
poison
. It paralyzes the muscles in your face so you can't smile,” said Nancy. Her husband was a doctor and that made her the group's resident medical expert. “There are potentially
devastating
side effects. Did you hear about the doctor couple who injected each other and ended up
paralyze
d
?”

“Well, sure, okay, fine, it's a toxin.” Fiona realized she was
slurring, that what she had actually said was “toxshin.” Three glasses, four? How many had she had? “But . . . but is it so wrong to want to feel
good
about yourself?”

“You need bovine toxin injected in your face to feel good about yourself?”

“I'm not talking about
me
. I'm just saying.” (Which sounded like, “I'm jusht shaying.”
Uh-oh
.
I should have eaten at least one of those stupid dates.
) “Why are we judging people who do these things? Not everyone who has these treatments looks terrible. Do they?”

Nancy leaned forward with interest. In addition to being the medical expert, she was also the most notorious gossip. “Why are you so focused on this? Have you recently had something done?” But she sounded dubious, like probably Fiona would look better than she did, especially lately, if cosmetic intervention were at play.

“I guess all I'm trying to say is, are all the people who do things like this really unworthy? Not as good as the ones in this crappy book because they don't walk around saying things like ‘I've grown accustomed to my own face' and, ‘I've learned to love myself, which is the greatest love of all'?”

“I don't think she said, ‘I've grown accustomed to my own face,'” said Carole.

“Or that last part. Which I think is a Whitney Houston song,” ventured Jane in a tone within which Fiona detected kindness, not mocking, and felt grateful for. “But I think you're right. It got to be a bit much. I didn't finish it, either . . .”

Fiona looked at Jane. She was smiling at her, shaking her head a little as if to say,
You and me, we're actually the only normal ones here.

Fiona realized she wanted to leave. Immediately. She suddenly wanted to be anywhere but there, with the neighborhood wives whom she had once felt so firmly and smugly in
a group with, regardless of whether she actually liked them. She remembered a time when the very existence of these women in her life, the fact that she was friends with them, had made her feel as though she had won some sort of contest. And also as though she had succeeded in being nothing like her mother, who had never understood the importance of sorority in a broad sense, versus a pour-your-heart-out, leave-yourself-bare, get-yourself-hurt sense.

Except now Fiona
wished
to pour her heart out. But even though she was clearly upset, not one of the women asked her if she was all right, not one of them leaned forward, rubbed her back, poured her more wine even though she clearly didn't need it, and said,
Is everything okay, Fiona? Do you need to talk?

Instead, after a brief silence, the conversation about the book began to rise around her again.

Fiona stood. “I'm going to take myself home,” she said. “I think that cheese was off. My stomach is upset.” They ignored her. She heard someone whisper, “She didn't eat a thing.”

On the way out, she looked at herself in the mirror and attempted to smooth the furrows in her brow. She couldn't. She looked angry, permanently.
But I'm not angry. I'm sad. I'm scared. I'm lonely.

She heard a sound behind her, and saw Jane's face and torso now beside her in the mirror. Fiona noticed Jane's brow was perfectly smooth. “Hey,” Jane said. “Maybe you shouldn't drive . . .”

“I'm only a few streets away,” Fiona said, but she let Jane take her elbow, knowing she was right.

When they were outside, Fiona gave Jane her keys.

“I'm embarrassed,” she said.

“Don't be. You were fantastic. And I agree with you completely, by the way. It's about time someone stood up to those old biddies.”

Fiona found herself laughing. “Old biddies? But we're all basically the same age.”

“That may be, but there are some nights I sit at those book club meetings and feel like the youngest person in the room, by decades. Don't you ever?”

Fiona was silent. And then she said, “No. Never. Most of the time I feel like the oldest. Also, once you said I seemed like I was in my early forties. But I'm only thirty-eight.”

“You don't
look
like the oldest. I'm sorry I said that. It's just that you're so accomplished—wise or something. Honestly. You look fantastic. But you know,
I
get Botox all the time, and no one ever, ever notices. My dermatologist is a wizard.”

Fiona turned to her. “Really? But your face . . . moves.”

“That's because he's so good. It's undetectable. Baby doses. That's the secret. Do you want me to get you an appointment?”

“Do you think he could fix these?” Fiona frowned at Jane and ran a finger along the ridge between her brows. She realized she had never done this, never sat in a car—or anywhere—with a woman who wasn't her sister, and discussed something as frivolous as wrinkles.
Girl talk, that's what it's called. And you've never even had it with your sisters, if you're being honest with yourself.