Trophy House (12 page)

I retreated to Truro. When I arrived, the wind was ferocious—loud as a train, bending tree branches and whipping sand against the windows. Raymie and Mitch were in Florida, in a condo owned by Mitch, escaping the coldest, dampest, windiest weeks of the Truro winter. I was feeling so low that I turned on the television. There's little or no cable on the Outer Cape, although some folks have satellite dishes that skew around crazily in the wind. I watched the news, stunned by the consistency of George Bush's instincts, which struck me as instinctively wrong-headed, mean-spirited, and sometimes tyrannical. He seemed to be convinced that business was more important than people and that this should come as a surprise was in itself a surprise; this depressed me and for the first time in years, the weather and isolation made me feel edgy in my house rather than snug. Just as I had made up my mind to go back to town right after breakfast the next day, the phone rang.

“Hi there, sweetheart, it's me, your New York admirer.”

“David! How did you know I was here?”

“I called you in Watertown and a man, I guess it was your husband, said, ‘She's not here.' I told him I was the editor of the book you were working on and that I needed to get in touch with you. He suggested e-mail. I don't think he was going to tell me where you were until I used the word ‘urgent.'”

“So like Tom,” I said. “Where are you?”

“You're not going to believe this,” David said. “I'm at the Provincetown airport,” he said. “I just used the bathroom and bought a Mars Bar from the vending machine.”

“You're not serious.” He assured me he was. “I'll come pick you up,” I said. “But you know, you can't stay here.”

“Oh?”

“This place has eyes and ears you wouldn't believe,” I said. “They can see and hear through walls. And they get high on chewing over juicy bits of gossip: ‘Who was that guy who got into Dannie Faber's car with her at the airport?' Bad enough I should be seen picking you up at the airport. I tell you what, I'll wait outside in the car. It'll take me about twenty minutes to get there. Is that okay?”

“Are you sure you're not being just a wee bit paranoid?”

“I'm sure. David?”

“Yes?”

“Damn—I can't wait to see you.”

David was standing outside the front door of our spiffy new airport, since 2001 fitted out with the latest in security equipment, including a giant machine that X-rays every bit of your luggage, including carry-ons and laptops, and makes you step on a scale right in front of everyone. The smile he produced when he saw me melted the hesitation that had been forming like a chunk of ice over my heart on the drive over. He tossed his shoulder bag into the back seat, got into the car and leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “You smell good,” he said.

“You sure no one saw you?” I said.

“A couple of people saw me,” he said. “I'm not exactly invisible. But they didn't know where I was headed. Although, come to think of it, a guy in coveralls gave me a fishy look…”

“You're kidding, aren't you?”

“Yes, I'm kidding.”

“It's not funny, David. I don't feel right about this.”

“You're ambivalent. That's okay with me, honeypot. I wouldn't like you so much if you didn't feel conflicted. It's going to come out fine, I know it, whatever happens. Right now, I want you to tell me what we're seeing. Believe it or not, I've never been out this way before. I always meant to, but just never got around to it—'til now.”

Just having him six inches away set me on fire. Maybe I was going through a second puberty, with all systems electrified, ready for someone to hit the button. I hadn't felt so excited since the first year I was married to Tom. “You're passing Pilgrim Lake,” I told him. I cut over to the shore drive to be off the highway and close to the bay. It was lead-gray, with white caps. “It's kind of bleak,” David said.

“You should see it in early July. Pink and red galore, everything in bloom. It knocks your socks off.”

I told him this bleakness created the kind of tension that exists only in a place where the seasons are discrete and distinct in the extreme. “It's not like Antigua or the South Pole. What you see and feel in winter isn't anything like what you see and feel in summer. It keeps you on your toes.” He smiled at me indulgently and I realized I was sounding pedantic, but it seemed more important for me to underscore my devotion to my home than to achieve the right insouciant tone.

When we got to the house, I was really nervous about being seen with David. I looked in every direction, but of course, since I was out of sight of anyone on my stretch of the beach, I needn't have bothered. Still, my conscience was bothering me. David represented the New York part of me and when he came to the Cape, he had changed the rules, making them harder to obey.

“You first,” he said as I gestured for him to go inside. So he followed me in. Once the front door was behind us, he put his hands on my shoulders and his eyes focused on mine, told me that he'd been terrified the plane would be grounded and he wouldn't be able to make it.

“What did you tell your boss?” I said.

“
I'm
my boss,” he said. “I told me I was going to spend a night with the love of my life.”

This did not seem to require any sort of response, so I asked him what he had told Ashley. “I said I'd be back day after tomorrow. She's got my cell phone number if there's an emergency.” I wondered what sort of emergency might befall an editor of children's books; it wasn't exactly like working for the Defense Department.

“Where's the bedroom?” he said.

“I love your house,” he said as he unbuckled his belt and stepped out of his chinos. His calves swelled with muscle. He pulled down his boxers. His penis pointed toward the ceiling. “Aren't you going to get undressed?” he said.

“Oh.” I had been transfixed, watching him. “Look at it!”

He looked down. “‘She plays me like a lute, what tune she will, / No string in me but trembles at her touch.' But in your case, you don't even have to touch me.”

“That's nice,” I said. “Who wrote that? You?”

“I'm flattered. It's John Masefield.”

The only poem I ever heard Tom quote was “Casey at the Bat.”

“Come on, let me see you, feel you, astonish you.”

 

Sometime later—it was heavy dusk and the wind had dropped almost entirely—David asked me whether I'd like to go out for dinner and, although the idea had definite appeal, I was afraid that one of our hungry gossips would see us together at one of the few restaurants still open.

“We could sit at separate tables,” he said. “Or how about takeout?”

I shook my head. “No takeout. No Chinese restaurant, except at the Wellfleet miniature golf place. We'll have to rough it.” There was enough in the freezer and the cabinets to make a soup, a couple of broiled chicken thighs, courtesy of the defrost setting on the microwave oven, and a canned bean salad. David had brought a bottle of Pinot Grigio, which he uncorked. I lit two candles. “Voilà,” I said. “What do you think of the instant feast?”

As we sat down to eat, it struck me with some force that David had gone on as Tom's understudy in my domestic drama. How was he doing? He was doing just fine, outdoing the star, who had gone lazy and forgetful. He praised the food and he reached for my hand, holding it lightly. “I can't just go home and that's that,” he said.

“What did you have in mind?” I said.

“I want to be with you all the time. You give me the feeling that the world isn't going to hell.”

“Isn't that optimism by default?” I said.

“Whatever. But I'm terribly lonely when I'm not with you; I thought I liked living alone. I don't. There's no one to listen to my bitching about the job. Besides, I think about you instead of my work. It's getting so that someone noticed in a meeting last week. He said, ‘Head in the clouds again?'”

“We're not sixteen.”

“Don't you think I've been over this territory a million times?”

“Of course, but I want to know what exactly you have in mind.”

“You said that already.”

“But you didn't answer.”

“I want you to come to New York. I want us to live together.” He paused, meaning to make the pause create an impact. “Why don't you say something?”

“I haven't found the right words.” I got up and started pacing around the room, then stopped by the window below which lay the bay, reflecting the moonlight in silver slashes. It got to me; every time I looked at it, the bay was saying something different. David talked behind me, still sitting at the table. I could imagine the slight frown that went with the pretty speech. He told me that it was hardly news that my marriage had languished to a point where it seemed unlikely to get up and dance again. “The guy doesn't make you happy,” he said. “Anyone can see that.” He told me it was hardly news that he and I were great together, great in bed and out of it. “I make you feel good. You make me feel good. Tell me, Dannie, what's to keep you where you are?”

“Momentum,” I said. “The known.”

“You're afraid.”

“You're right,” I said. “I'm terrified.”

 

The next day, after David left, I drove back to Watertown. No traffic. My neighbor, Alicia Baer, knocked on the back door as I was washing up after breakfast. “Something tells me you need to vent,” she said. “Do you have a cup of coffee for me?” I gave her the coffee and asked how she knew so much about me. “All this coming and going,” she said. “And always alone. Unnatural.”

“Well…” Not only had she been spying on me, but she showed signs of being a bit more confrontational than I was prepared for. I suppose she figured that taking care of Marshall gave her the right to speak her mind. Besides, there was something forceful about her that obliged me to talk. I trusted her not to spread my good tidings all over the neighborhood. So I briefly painted a picture of me bathed by indecision and panic. She asked me if I loved David (I didn't tell her his last name) and I admitted that I thought so but I couldn't be sure. “At the beginning, how do you know whether it's love or lust?” Alicia didn't try to give me an acceptable answer. “The trouble is,” I said, “by the time you find out which it really is, it's probably too late. The bridges have been burned.” She reminded me that I didn't have to marry David. I could simply move in with him. The children were grown and I couldn't use them as an excuse to stay put. So the only real impediment was Tom. Wasn't that true? Alicia asked if my HMO provided for therapy. I don't know why it hadn't occurred to me to talk to a person whose profession it was to help you climb out of some muck you're in up to your eyeballs.

It was easy enough to find out that my HMO gives you ten almost free hours if you can convince your “primary caregiver” that you need it. Not for a second did I believe I was going nuts, but I was sure I could persuade my thirty-something doctor that my anxiety was as stubborn as a case of psoriasis. As it turned out, I didn't even have to visit her. When I called her, she asked me, “How old are you now?” and when I said fifty-three, she seemed to think it was standard for a woman my age to need help. “Just wait, honey,” I thought. She gave me a couple of names and then reminded me that the kind of therapy they offered was strictly short-term. That was fine with me, as I wasn't up to doing any serious archeology. I made an appointment with a man named Gerard Casell—emphasis on the second syllable, as he told me over the phone when I called him Castle. He turned out to be in his forties, wore chinos (this seems to be the uniform for guys who wish they could wear jeans to work) and a tan polo shirt. He plied his trade in an office smaller than Raymie's new clothes closet. There were photographs on the wall—technicolor mountain scenes
avec
mist, which I assumed he had taken himself. We got down to business soon after “Tell me a little bit about yourself,” when he asked, “And what brings you here?” I couldn't stop thinking of that scene in the movie
You Can Count on Me,
when the Laura Linney character goes to see her minister to confess to sleeping with her married boss and the minister refuses to tell her what she wants to hear, namely, “You're a sinner and you'll burn in hell if you don't stop right now—and maybe it's already too late.”

“I'm cheating on my husband,” I said. “If I were younger or a different sort of person, I assure you I wouldn't be here at all.”

“What sort of person would that be?”

“A person who thinks it's okay so long as the husband doesn't find out. I guess I've got a fairly active conscience.”

“I see,” he said.

“So what do I do?”

Dr. Casell cleared his throat. “As I see it, you have two choices. Either you stop seeing this man or you develop a more passive conscience.”

“How does one do that? I mean the conscience thing?”