Second Nature (11 page)

It was always dark by the time he reached Mansfield Terrace. Marco Polo sat in his driveway and barked as Stephen ran past, and in spite of Stephen’s natural dislike for dogs, he paid no attention. He pretended not to notice when Roy’s car was parked on the corner, just waiting for him to make a mistake. He had no choice but to ignore everything except the fact that he was almost there, running right into the moment he had been thinking about all day, when he walked through the door and saw her, and each time he did he could not believe that men could feel this way and act as though they felt nothing at all.

 
 
The birds began to avoid the Dixons’ yard; they would light on the redwood fence or along the telephone wires, but they wouldn’t go any farther. The bird feeder spilled over with millet and seeds that went untouched. The blueberries on the bushes at the rear of the house were never disturbed. Patty Dixon wondered if it was the weedkiller they’d used in the spring, strong stuff that Robin had advised against, because earlier in June, Patty had found five sparrows dead on the grass, and now the birds simply wouldn’t come back, and the birdhouses her husband, Lou, had made in his workshop were all empty.

Patty was known for her cheerful attitude; she was determined to look on the bright side. She conferred with Robin, then ordered bushes the birds wouldn’t be able to resist: honeysuckle and winterberry, sweet raspberries and holly. One hot morning, when the birds in other people’s yards had already set up a racket, Stephen dragged over the new bushes, their roots still wrapped in burlap. He dug holes all along the fence, adding lime and manure, pausing only to drink some of Patty Dixon’s homemade lemonade. Sitting out on her patio with Michelle, Robin could hear him working in the Dixons’ backyard.

“Stephen’s all wrong for you,” Michelle said. Robin made a face pretending she didn’t understand, but Michelle waved her hand, as if clearing the air between them. “You’re not going to tell me, so I might as well say it straight-out. You’re on the rebound—that’s what’s going on here.”

“Nothing’s going on here,” Robin insisted.

“Remember who you’re talking to. I know you.”

“And you’re acting as my guidance counselor?” Robin said.

“Look, I was never one of Roy’s fans, but I think he’s changed.”

“Please,” Robin said.

“I mean it. He phoned me,” Michelle admitted. “It just didn’t sound like the same old Roy. He’s asked me to keep an eye on you.”

“See,” Robin told her. “He hasn’t changed one bit. All he knows is how to sneak around.”

“I think you’d be making a mistake. You’d get hurt.”

“Stephen is living here,” Robin said. “That’s all.”

“In other words, shut up.”

“Shut up,” Robin agreed.

She offered Michelle more coffee, and Michelle raised her cup.

“I can’t give my advice away,” Michelle said. “Lydia barely speaks to me. Last Friday, she didn’t come home till after two in the morning. There was sand on her shoes.”

“You sound like a detective,” Robin said. “Now there’s something Roy would do, check the soles of her shoes.”

“I’ve thought about following her,” Michelle admitted.

“Well, don’t. She would never forgive you.”

“Excuse me?” Michelle said. “Whose side are you on?”

Robin took Michelle’s hand in hers. “Yours,” she said. “Always.”

Michelle laughed and drew her hand away. “Right. You never let me win at anything.”

And it was true: since kindergarten, Robin had stubbornly made most of the rules. It was only recently, when she’d first realized their friendship was not as one-sided as they pretended and that, if anything, she was the one who needed Michelle.

“You can win now,” Robin told her.

“I think it’s a little late,” Michelle said. Still, she was cheered. She threw back her head and actually laughed. The first time in weeks.

Robin held her coffee cup tightly; her fingers had begun to turn white. She looked down at the patio that she had designed and built, with the Doctor’s advice, when she and Roy first bought the house. Lately she hadn’t allowed herself to think about what she was doing, let alone understand the reasons why. The first time, she told herself she forgot to lock his door. The second time it wasn’t so easy to pretend. She’d stood there in the hallway for several minutes, her heart racing, then turned and walked to her room.

“Just don’t do anything stupid,” Michelle was saying to her now. “Don’t do anything you’ll live to regret.”

As he planted the first of the honeysuckle, Stephen could hear the women’s voices, and the sound was soothing, a rhythm to which he worked. When Matthew Dixon came out of the house, Stephen felt vaguely annoyed. He didn’t want to be interrupted, he was covered with dirt and sweat, but he knew enough to stop and nod a hello.

“Looks like you’re doing a good job,” Matthew said. He had spent the past month in his room; his complexion was pasty and he blinked in the sunlight.

“Yeah,” Stephen grunted, as he shoveled dirt over the roots.

“I’ve been working on my programs. For my computer,” Matthew added when Stephen looked blank.

“Don’t know anything about it.”

“Really?” Matthew said. In his shirt pocket he had two Mars bars that he was saving for later. “Computers can do anything you want them to do. If you’re smart enough to handle them. I could find out anything you wanted me to, given the time and the access. I can do things people wouldn’t believe.”

In spite of his huge size, Matthew seemed less a college student than a little boy, one blown up with an air pump. He hadn’t had much practice conversing with people, and maybe that was why he didn’t take the hint when Stephen didn’t answer and just kept on working, as though he were alone.

“People think they have privacy, but really, if you know how to tap into the right networks, you can pretty much get any file you want.”

Stephen figured he was stuck with Matthew; he nodded to the next bush.

“Oh,” Matthew said, pleased. “Sure.”

He brought the honeysuckle over, and together they fitted it into the hole; then Matthew stood back as Stephen filled the dirt back in. It was an easy enough job, but on the last shovelful of earth, Stephen felt the metal hit against something. Puzzled, he stopped and crouched down.

“What is it?” Matthew said.

Stephen put his hands into the dirt. Above them the sky was perfectly blue.

“Oh, brother.” Matthew came closer.

A red-and-white cat had been buried in the dirt; its coat was matted, its jaws locked.

“That’s the Simons’ cat,” Matthew said. “Reggie.”

Stephen stood up and shoveled the corpse into the earth beside the honeysuckle. “It’s as good a place as any.”

“Right,” Matthew said, backing away.

Stephen realized that he could no longer hear the women talking. They had gone inside, and his rhythm was broken.

“I guess you don’t need me bothering you,” Matthew said.

“No bother,” Stephen said, because that was the sort of thing men said when they didn’t mean it. He turned to finish his work, so intent that he didn’t hear Matthew go back inside, he didn’t notice that there were fresh blisters on his hands, or that he was hearing the women’s voices anyway, somewhere inside his head.

He knew Robin had stopped locking his door at night. Sleep was impossible; every sound jarred him. He heard everything. Not just the wind and the rain and the house settling, but Connor sneaking out, long past midnight. Connor always went out the side door and closed it carefully behind him. He carried his sneakers under his arm and shoved them on when he got into the yard. From his window, Stephen could see the radiant look on the boy’s face as he bent down to tie his laces.

He knew what Connor was doing, because once he had seen the girl waiting, under the streetlight, at the end of Mansfield Terrace. She had that same luminous look, weightless and ignited. Even when they disappeared together, down the dark street, they left a pool of light behind them. And so it seemed to Stephen that everyone knew the secret he’d wanted to ask the old man about, even Connor, who was only a boy. What was this, this light that burned inside you, this thing that made you feel as though you couldn’t get enough air? He knew what loyalty was, it was what made you stay together and protect each other and share when there wasn’t enough for yourself.

But this was different, this seemed as if it could kill you if you weren’t careful. Stephen had to be careful, and he was careful all the time. He judged himself harshly. She’d forgotten the lock, that was all; anything more was simply in his own mind. There were nights when he moved the oak dresser in front of his door. He took the old black coat out of the closet and wrapped himself up, but he was much too hot to wear it. He began to burn on the coolest evenings, and the heat went up, into his head, until he thought he might explode. He believed he must be crazy or under the influence of some terrible ailment that boiled his blood, and there was no one to tell him that falling in love would make any sensible man feel exactly the same.

EACH AUGUST, STUART placed his alarm clock in a dresser drawer and slept until the white-hot sunlight woke him. He wore the same clothes for as long as he liked, and didn’t bother to shave. This, the most beautiful month of the year, stretched out before him endlessly, with days that lasted achingly long, and nights that were purple and rich. For the whole month he didn’t work; he didn’t set foot in the hospital. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about his patients, but he needed to think about simple things: Bluefish and watering cans. Fresh peaches, sliced thin. Egrets, feasting on minnows and crabs.

This year, however, Stuart’s thoughts were not simple, and August brought no comfort. He had meant it when he told Kay he didn’t want the house. He’d had enough of the island to last him a lifetime; he was forty-two years old and the shop-keepers still treated him like a little boy, discreetly suggesting bargain goods the way they had after Old Dick went broke. But now, facing a summer in Manhattan, he felt waves of panic. If he’d been his own patient, he would have recommended a strong antidepressant and intensive therapy. As it was, he watched TV around the clock and found himself growing addicted to game shows and news programs. He’d planned to rent a house out in Sag Harbor, but somehow he’d never gotten around to it. And then one night, early in August, he woke up suddenly from a deep sleep and he knew that he wanted to go home. He packed an overnight bag, which was really all he needed, and took the Long Island Rail Road to the familiar stop. He walked briskly past the willows and over the bridge, then went to Kay and begged her to take him back.

Kay wasn’t about to agree to a reconciliation, but she did agree to let him stay on the third floor, which had once been his office and had its own entrance and a small kitchen and bathroom. He felt like getting down on his knees right there on the front porch and begging for forgiveness. What had happened between them, he still wasn’t sure. At first, he thought it was because they hadn’t had children, but the truth was, he’d grown dull and taken her for granted and now it was too late. As he carried his overnight bag around to the side of the house, Kay took his arm.

“One thing you should know,” she said. “I’m dating.”

He had never loved anyone but Kay, he saw that now. How had he managed to lose her?

“Well, that’s good,” Stuart said.

He would like to see some aging beau try to cross his path. My God, the way he was feeling, he might just be there waiting for her date with a pitchfork or an axe. Kay had taken a step back to study him.

“Really,” Stuart insisted. “You’ve made a healthy adjustment.”

Like the desperate man he was he went to her, intending to loop his arms around her. There must be hope for them, otherwise she wouldn’t have agreed to maintain a friendship. But Kay held up her hand, as if directing traffic, to keep him away.

“Stuart,” she said. “It’s over.”

“I know that,” Stuart told her. “Of course it is.”

He went upstairs to what had once been his office and was now a musty storage area, then stretched out full on the floor and wept. Kay went into her kitchen, which she had just painted pale pink—she was, in fact, currently dating the painter, a large-boned Russian who loved to dance and who fixed potato-and-onion soup—and immediately phoned Robin.

“Your brother’s here having a nervous breakdown,” Kay announced. “Or maybe it’s a midlife crisis. I’m not really sure what the difference is.”

“You let him move back in?” Robin asked. She herself had been avoiding talking to Stuart, since it wasn’t quite as easy to lie to him as she’d imagined.

“He’s up on the third floor. Let’s face it. He has nothing. He’s been at the hospital for fifteen years, and not one patient has ever improved. He has no social life. I don’t think he even knows how to talk to a woman. He certainly never talked to me. So I’m letting him stay, but just for August,” Kay said. “And I’m not taking full responsibility.”

Which meant, of course, that Robin had to. She went over that afternoon, with a bag of groceries and the prescription for Prozac that Kay had ordered refilled at the pharmacy. She found the door to the third floor unlocked; bats had been nesting in the rafters and bits of plaster were sprinkled about.

“Get off the floor,” Robin told her brother. “I brought Entenmann’s chocolate doughnuts.”

“This is clearly a generational pattern,” Stuart said thoughtfully when he joined her at the dusty table. “Inability to maintain intimacy. It’s no accident that both of our marriages broke up.”

“Oh, really?” Robin said. She had her hair tied up with a shoelace and she wore old shorts and a white T-shirt that was smudged with dirt, and just for a second she wondered if she should have paid more attention to her appearance. Roy was the sort of man who liked women to wear short black dresses and high heels; he didn’t see any good reason for a woman to wear underwear, unless it was something tiny and made out of lace.