by Meg Wolitzer
“Want some company?” Natalie asked, as he’d hoped she would.
“Sure,” he said carelessly, and he felt the muscles in his face tighten. He went inside and poked his head into the bathroom. “I’m taking Duncan out!” he called into the mist, and then he didn’t even wait for Maddy’s reply.
THEY WALKED in silence through the dark, quiet streets, the carriage creaking a little on its springs. The neighbor was out walking his tiny, frail dog, who stopped to sniff and select a perfect place to lift his wishbone of a leg. The old man pretended that he hadn’t seen Peter and Natalie, and actually turned his head as they passed him. Eventually there were no more houses, and no street lamps either. The road became absolutely dark as they approached the entrance to the beach.
“Oh, I can’t see at all,” Natalie said.
“Here, take my hand,” said Peter, and she did. They had held hands before, on the afternoon of mushrooms, so it was a familiar sensation. They walked through the parking lot, and he saw the approximate shapes of two parked cars. Ahead, on the beach, some people had lit torches and stuck them into the sand. An informal nighttime volleyball game was taking place, the ball thwapping back and forth over a vaguely visible net. When Peter and Natalie stepped onto the beach, the wheels of the carriage instantly slowed. Peter pushed on, until finally the effort was too great, and that was where they stopped. In the distance, the volleyball players kept the ball aloft. Someone shouted out, “Spike it!”
“Do you want to sit down?” Natalie asked. They sat a few yards from the water, side by side, Duncan now fast asleep in the carriage.
“We all used to come here at night,” he said to her.
“Sara too?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Her hair would keep blowing in her face, kind of covering it. She’d keep pushing it back.” He looked at Natalie, whose own hair was blowing in her face. You look so much like her, you know,” Peter said.
“I’m a lot older.”
“Well, you don’t look it.”
“You’re very sweet,” Natalie said.
“No, I’m not, actually,” Peter said, and then he didn’t know what to say next, had completely run out of anything to say that seemed remotely natural. After a moment he realized she had quietly begun to sing, and the strangeness of the song made him turn to her.
“Uoy t’nod rebmemer em, tub I rebmemer uoy …,” she was singing: Sara’s backwards song. “Ti t’nsaw gnol oga, / uoy ekorb ym traeh ni owt / sraet no ym wollip / niap ni ym traeh / desuac yb uoy / uoy, uoy uoy uoy …” He just stared at her for a moment and then moved forward so that she was in his arms. She came to him easily; her shoulders were as narrow and lovely as a girl’s. She took his hand and brought it to her mouth, kissing the fingertips. The sky overhead was dark, and they could see each other in the dim torchlight of the volleyball game. She let go of his hand, and then he turned slightly, and Natalie’s mouth landed against his. They both waited to see what would happen, if the kiss would stay innocent and childlike, if mouths would stay closed, if eyes would stay open. He needed to see if he was imagining her desire for him, if perhaps she scattered sexuality carelessly in the vicinity of men.
But then she opened her mouth against his, and his questions abruptly ended in the stun of warmth. This was all insanely arousing; they pulled apart for a moment in order to mumble and groan at the excitement of it all, and then they kissed again.
“You don’t know how much I’ve wanted to do this,” he said to her, and they were poised in that tremendous moment, when you’re not sure what will happen, how far this will go, where it will take you, or even why it is happening. Down the shore, a man trolled for coins with a divining rod, moving it listlessly back and forth like a janitor with a vacuum at the end of a long day. Someone else was in the water; there was splashing and laughter. The volleyball kept going back and forth over the ghostly net. Peter’s breathing came quickly, and his desire for Natalie had become as big as his desire for Sara that afternoon on her couch. He knew he would do anything now.
But then there was the sound of crying, a sudden, car-alarm baby screech. Peter sprang away from Natalie. In the carriage, Duncan was sobbing, staring indignantly out at Natalie and Peter as though with a kind of knowledgeable fury. A strange sensation rippled across Peter: his seven-month-old baby knew this was all wrong, and was stopping them from going any further. Shakily, Peter unbelted Duncan from his T-strap, and once in his arms the baby became calmer, hiccuping as his crying ceased. Natalie and Peter smiled tensely at each other over the baby’s head and shrugged, trying to turn the moment into something humorous, when in fact they both felt a dizzying tilt, the bewilderment that follows interrupted arousal—a tug of gravity from the real world.
“I guess it’s a sign from God,” she said, smoothing out her blouse. Then she added, “I’m glad.”
“Me too,” he said, and suddenly he was. Giddy and disoriented, an absurd slogan came to his mind: “I made out with Sara’s mother … and all I got was this stupid T-shirt.” The situation was wild; he wished she could laugh with him about it, but he knew she couldn’t. He watched her straightening her collar with her delicate hands. “It’s like we’re open to any crazy thing that comes along,” he said. “It’s like we’re completely up for grabs.”
“I think I know what you mean,” she said.
“You are very beautiful,” he told her.
“Oh, don’t,” she said, holding up a hand.
“But I want to tell you this.”
“Peter, don’t say anything else,” she said. “No offense, but just shut up a little, okay?”
So he did, and they stayed for a while longer on the beach, pretending to watch the volleyball game. Peter’s breathing began to slow, his arousal began to dissipate, and his heart, just doing what it was told, returned to its uneventful, day-to-day thud. Held fast in his father’s arms, the baby seemed to smile in triumph—or was it gas?
They walked back to the house together, the carriage groaning and squeaking. In the living room, Maddy was now sitting and watching television. Her hair was still wet from the shower, plastered down against her head, and she was in a robe. She looked up when they came in, her face neutral and unreadable. “I’ll bring Duncan upstairs and change him,” Peter said to her, and she nodded. He lifted the baby from the carriage and carried him up the steps. Natalie followed; he assumed she was just going into her room, but instead she trailed behind him and walked into his room. He lay the baby down on the bed and began to open his diaper, the tape making an adhesive sucking sound. He unscrewed a jar of A&D ointment, filling the room with that familiar nursery smell, and he waited for Natalie to say something, for clearly she wanted to. But she said nothing, so he spoke first.
“I don’t regret it, you know,” he said quietly.
“Do you regret Sara?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Peter said. “People’s lives are very weird. Things happen—unbelievable things.”
“She felt very guilty about you,” said Natalie, “because of Maddy. She didn’t want to hurt her; they were such great friends. She knew that it wasn’t the kind of thing you should do to a friend, and yet she said there was something in her that afternoon that overrode that idea. She called me up that day and said, ‘Mom, I’ve done a terrible thing.’ And then she was crying so hard I couldn’t understand her.”
In the room, the conversation was muted and the baby rolled and played with a squeak toy on the bed. What had risen up between Peter and Sara’s mother was settling down, returning to earth.
But below the bedroom, one flight down in the living room, Maddy sat in silence on the couch, holding the baby monitor in her hand, everything said by Peter and Natalie being transmitted with stunning clarity, and the row of red lights jumping as the words were spoken.
MADDY MADE A decision then and there that she would not respond, would not freak out. She decided she would simply endure the rest of the time here in the house, keeping to herself, losing herself
completely in Duncan. The next afternoon everyone went to the beach, and while they were all setting up blankets and towels and driving the post of the umbrella into the sand, Maddy took Duncan farther down the shore. She sat with him a few feet from the water, letting him play nearby. He loved to dig in the sand with a plastic cup and spoon. A big hat shielded his face, and she had slathered him with sunblock, so he was safe. Maddy sat watching him, trying not to think about Peter and Natalie, or Peter and Sara, but she was no dope, she knew it all now.
After Labor Day, when they had to go back to the city, she would announce that she wanted a separation. Peter would look shocked, would attempt to appear innocent, but she would not be swayed. She and Duncan would move to one of those one-bedroom boxy apartments in a high-rise. The crib would go right in the middle of the living room, surrounded by Maddy’s law texts and papers. She would become one of those overworked, single professional mothers, whose children are starved for attention. Fuck Peter, she thought. He did this to us. He did it. She closed her eyes and cried in silence—for the loss of her marriage, for how she had been betrayed, for how Sara had betrayed her too, and how Maddy could never confront her about it. It was as though her life had caved in and there was no way to reconstruct it around herself. Work might help, and being with Duncan, but apart from those arenas she would grow bitter; no one would want to be near her. Men would avoid her, not that they’d ever flocked to her to begin with.
What had Sara needed Peter for, anyway? Was it just because Sara had needed everything, had needed to taste it all and try it all and be at the center of everyone’s interest? Sara had experienced remorse, according to a few words spoken by her mother over a plastic baby monitor; well, big deal, remorse wasn’t enough. Maddy cried and cried now, her head in her hands, lost in the fantasy of herself and Sara at Camp Ojibway, sitting among the trees, never imagining the direction that everything would take, never understanding that lives took directions—thinking merely that life was an adventure, a long walk in the woods taken by two young girls.
She looked up now to check on Duncan, but he wasn’t there. Maddy’s heart began to flutter; she stood up on the sand, thinking she might pass out. How could this have happened, when Duncan couldn’t even crawl?
“What’s the matter?” a man with a bucket asked her.
“My baby’s gone,” she said in a voice of plaintive helplessness, and surely these were the most pathetic words in the world. In the next few moments there was a great swirl of action around her, everyone talking and gesturing and becoming involved. Voices echoed to one other: “Her baby …” she heard, and “Missing.” In the middle of the fuss and noise there was a sudden new activity, and Maddy looked up to see the crowd part and Natalie come striding through, holding Duncan. He was fine, blinking and looking around him in surprise. Maddy screamed—a single, brief syllable—then she took him from Natalie’s arms, burying her head in the creases of her baby’s neck, feeling an enormous, animal relief. There was an acid taste in her mouth, and a sudden drenching of sweat in the hollows under her arms.
“He crawled along the shore,” Natalie was saying. “I saw him go—he was like a little sand crab, and I just scooped him up and brought him back.”
“Duncan doesn’t crawl,” said Maddy.
“He does now,” Natalie said. “Very fast, too.”
Peter appeared then, and behind him were Shawn and Adam, and quickly everything was explained and re-explained. “Thank you,” Peter said quietly to Natalie. “My God, he might have drowned. What would we have done?”
“Yes, thank you,” Maddy said flatly. But she couldn’t even look at Natalie. The circle of watchers had broken up, going back to their blankets, their radios, their places in the sun, since there was no real drama here after all. “You saved his life,” she added, and then she wrapped her arms tighter around Duncan, her baby who now crawled, who would soon walk, who would need to be watched more closely—her baby who would soon be off into the world.
14
Spinsters!
At the end of the season that had come to be known as the summer of Sara’s death, the house seemed to outlive its usefulness. No one wanted to be there now, but no one knew how to move. There was a geometry of bad feelings in the air—none of it referred to directly. The only sounds of pleasure and comfort came from Maddy and Duncan, a mother and child who played together these days with ease.
Natalie was searching for a pack of matches in her straw bag, when she came across the tape of Shawn’s songs that Mel Wolf had returned to her. “Oh, Shawn, I completely forgot,” she said, taking out the tape. “Mel Wolf asked me to give you this, and to say thank you for letting him listen to it.”
Shawn took the tape without saying a word, but Adam, who was watching the transaction, blinked a few times and said, “What’s all this?”
And so the story of Shawn’s secret tape was revealed to Adam, whose face took on a squinting expression of incredulity. “You gave my producer your tape?” he said. “Without my permission?”
“Your permission? Give me a fucking break. You’re not in charge,” said Shawn, his hand shaking a little as he thrust the tape back into his pocket.
“No, but I distinctly told you it would make me uncomfortable,” said Adam.
“He was just trying to get Mel to listen,” said Natalie. “Come on, Adam, lighten up.”
Adam swung around to stare at Natalie. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he said. “So please stay out of this.”
“Shawn didn’t mean anything,” she insisted.
“Yes he did, and don’t protect him,” Adam said. “You’re not his mother.” His voice was resoundingly loud and inappropriate, but he didn’t care. “You’re not my mother either, or the mother of any of us,” he went on. Everyone else just sat and stared. No one had ever raised their voice to Natalie; she was a grieving mother, she was exempt.
“I never said I was,” said Natalie.
“Oh, that is completely untrue,” he said. “You came here—I mean, you just showed up on our doorstep like an orphan—and what were we supposed to do, turn you away? No, we let you in because we felt sorry for you—”
“Don’t do me any favors,” said Natalie.
“So you became the big mother in the household. We were used to being the kids, and it felt right. But you got really into it, didn’t you?”
Natalie seemed to have sunk into her chair, to become smaller, old. Peter stood up in her vague defense, unsure of what to do. “Can you just stop this?” he asked Adam. “I think it’s enough already.”
“Oh, you’re one to talk,” said Maddy. “You’re the paragon of virtue, aren’t you?”
Peter turned to his wife. “I’m not a paragon of anything,” he said. “I know I’m not.” He moved toward Maddy, but she flinched away from him.
“Please don’t,” she said. “I’ve been putting up with this, I’ve been living in this house because I don’t know what else to do, but don’t make me pretend everything is okay.”
Shawn glanced back and forth between Maddy and Peter, puzzled. “Is there something going on here that I don’t know about?” he said. “I mean, I snuck my tape to Melville Wolf, I put it in his car; what does that have to do with anybody else?”
“It’s not about you, Shawn,” said Maddy.
“Then what is it about?” he asked.
“Sara,” she said simply.
“Sara?” said Shawn. “I didn’t even know her. I met her the night of the accident.”
“Exactly,” Maddy said. “But it doesn’t matter. It extends forever and ever. Her reach. Her influence. I mean,” she continued, “who the hell was she? This person who we confided in, who we lived with. Look at us—we’re so pathetic. Dwelling on her, trapped here with each other.” She stood up, trembly suddenly, and said, “I wish I’d never met her.”
Now Natalie, as though signaled by some maternalistic satellite, sprang into defensive words. “She was a wonderful girl. She was. I knew h
er like no one else.” She broke off her own speech, because she had begun to cry. Fumbling in her bag for a tissue, she blew her nose very hard, and then said, weakly, “I am in mourning here, you know. I am the person who’s grieving.”
“We all are,” said Adam.
“No,” she said. “I’m the mother. I’m the mother”
“Of course you are,” said Adam. “But we count too.”
“You were her friends, not her family,” Natalie said.
“I am so sick of that distinction,” Adam said. “Family is everything, and friends are nothing. Why wouldn’t you let us come to the funeral?”
“I already told you.”
“Tell me again. Don’t we have any rights? We wanted to say good-bye. But no good-byes were allowed. Instead, we get you instead.”
“You invited me,” said Natalie.
“We were desperate,” Adam said.
“I’ll say you were,” Natalie said.
“Sara was a part of our lives,” said Adam. “Not just yours. I loved her. We didn’t have a password we’d say on the phone—we didn’t have a little ‘Surrender, Dorothy’ shtick; we had something completely different. A friendship. Which,” he continued, inhaling hard, raggedly, “you don’t give me any credit for. Because I’m the ‘gay friend,’ and I wasn’t her lover—I wasn’t like goddamn phony Sloan, or one of those other men who wouldn’t have made her happy—so I have no right to be hysterical about her.” He paused, feeling so far out of his element that it temporarily emboldened him. “But I am hysterical,” he said. “We all are. This whole house is hysterical.” She kept staring at him. “Look,” he said, lowering his voice, “I know it’s the hardest thing in the world to lose a child.”
“Oh, don’t give me your platitudes,” said Natalie. “You don’t know anything about having a child.”
“No,” he said. “But I know about Sara.”
“She was my daughter,” said Natalie.
