Five Questions

by Kitty B. Florey

  Patrick, Wynn, and little Molly—that mythical happy family—became my favorite fantasy, and, sinking into it, I would feel a painful, shamed relief. At the same time, keeping all this from Patrick was agony for me. But how could I tell him that I had done something it would sicken him to hear? And how could I explain that I was in the grip of a fantasy of such hopeless bliss that by comparison real life, even lying in bed with the lover I adored, could not measure up?

  • • •

  Once when we were talking about my parents Patrick looked at me shrewdly and said, “What’s your problem with them? They sound nice enough, they seem like good parents.”

  I stared at him. “There is no problem. My parents are great. Why do you ask that?”

  “I don’t know. You just get that look on your face.”

  “What look?”

  “That holding-back look. You know. You’ve got it now.”

  I went over to the mirror. To me, my face just looked crabby. I smoothed it out, widened my eyes, put on an inane grin, and turned back to Patrick. “What? This?”

  He laughed, but it wasn’t Patrick’s way to let things go, and later he brought it up again in his oblique, undemanding way. “I don’t suppose it’s easy being an only child,” he said. “Or having one.”

  “You were an only child.”

  “Me?” He snorted. “My experience was so out of the loop it doesn’t count. A kid raised in a junkyard by an alcoholic Irish immigrant uncle. The fact that I was an only child seems a minor detail.”

  I was going to Maine less and less often: That spring I had seen my parents only once, when they were both in Boston on one of my mother’s visits to Haskell Graphics. I met them at the Ritz-Carlton for tea, and I didn’t bring Patrick, though I told them about him.

  “You broke up with Alec?” my mother asked, as if I’d said I had decided to have my legs amputated.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  They looked at me with concern. I had braided my hair neatly and dressed with care in a dress my mother had sent me, an aggressively simple green linen shift that I had finally located in the depths of my closet and ironed hastily on the edge of my bed while Patrick, still under the covers, watched with amusement. Looking down at my lap, I could see how inadequate a job I’d done.

  “May we ask why?”

  “I’m seeing someone else,” I said. “A sculptor.”

  My father looked interested. “What kind of sculpture?”

  “Sometimes wood. Mostly metal.”

  “Metal?”

  “Rusty stuff. Old mufflers and things.”

  “What on earth does he do with it?”

  “Probably not your kind of thing, Dad.”

  He smiled. “Maybe not anybody’s kind of thing.”

  “He’s won a million awards,” I said, more fiercely than I’d intended to. “He has a full scholarship. He’s going to be a great artist, a famous sculptor.”

  My father still looked dubious. “What’s he like?” he asked. “Besides poor and talented?”

  I hesitated, looking around the room: pale pink tablecloths, demure tea-drinkers, discreet conversation, waitresses with silver trays. Impossible, in such a place, to describe Patrick adequately. “He’s very nice.”

  My parents looked amused. “Well, I hope so,” my mother said. “Bring him up to see us.”

  I shrugged. “We’ll see how things go.”

  She smiled and smoothed my wrinkly sleeve. “That dress looks sweet on you,” she said, and my father asked how my painting was going, and the subject of Patrick was dropped, but the rest of the afternoon was wrapped in an aura of faint doubt and disapproval that, I realized, didn’t bother me at all. I had no intention of taking Patrick to Maine.

  But he was curious about what he considered my normal childhood, and he wanted to see my hometown, meet my parents. I put it off as long as I could. The prospect of going to Maine with him unnerved me. West Dunster was saturated with my secret past. The place was full of lies. There were people there who knew the truth—not only my parents, but Marietta, old teachers, the Erlings—and plenty more who knew half-truths or who suspected things. I had a panicky feeling that by some subtle osmosis, as soon as Patrick crossed into the town, past the WEST DUNSTER POP. 2,879 sign at the foot of Burbank Mountain, he would see deep into the other Wynn and know me for what I was. And despise me.

  But it wasn’t only that. It’s probably a shameful thing to admit, but I didn’t want my parents to know him. With Alec, I hadn’t cared—in fact, I enjoyed being in Maine with Alec, seeing him and my parents bond like old pals. But I wanted to keep Patrick for myself. He was mine, mine, and I wasn’t ready to trot him out for my parents to approve or disapprove.

  But in the end there was no getting out of it. In June, Patrick had a few days off from his welding job, and we took the bus to Maine. Once the decision was made, I was resigned: Whatever happened would happen. When I was feeling optimistic, I thought that in Maine I would even find the courage to tell him the truth: I wouldn’t be able to hold it back any longer. The truth had become, for me, a paradise, an idyllic place that I wanted more than anything to visit—a sort of Paris, a place I knew was unattainable but beautiful, liberating, full of wonders—a garden of delights, but hedged in by deadly thorns.

  Both my parents met us at the station in Dunster. They had approved of Alec on sight, but it was immediately obvious that they weren’t so sure about Patrick. I had assumed that his appearance would win my mother over—he was much handsomer than Alec—and that my father would, if nothing else, relate to him as another man who worked with his hands. But I saw their faces when we got off the bus, and suddenly observed him through their eyes: his hair badly needed cutting, he wore a faded CAESAR’S CLAM SHACK T-shirt from a thrift shop. The only shoes he had brought were battered old sandals, and he carried an aged green duffel that had gone through World War II with his father.

  My mother kissed my cheek. Then she said, “Patrick?” as if disbelieving it, and was taken aback when Patrick hugged her. My father winced visibly when they shook hands. “I’m so glad to meet you both,” Patrick said. “At last! I’ve been asking Wynn to bring me up here for months now, and she finally ran out of excuses.”

  My mother looked at me. “Well, we’re delighted that you managed to persuade her,” she said.

  “Yes, it’s great,” my father said vaguely.

  “It is, isn’t it?” Patrick said, smiling.

  All the way to our house in the car he asked questions about the landmarks we passed, the history of the town, the logging industry and the paper mills, the weather. His happiness at being there was intense, his delight in the rugged landscape and in finally meeting my family. Sitting squeezed beside me in the back seat of my mother’s Volkswagen, he kept his arm around me, and once he leaned down to give me a quick, exuberant kiss.

  I could sense my mother’s horrified realization: My God, she’s sleeping with this hippie slob. She had asked me once, when I was dating Alec, if I was being careful about birth control, and I assured her—somewhat testily—that she needn’t worry about it. That was all that was ever said, but I knew that the thought of my having sex with anyone made her and my father nervous, that the specter of Mark Erling was always with them.

  When we got to Brewster Road, after Patrick admired the bright blue front door, the wisteria that flanked it, my mother’s cozy kitchen, and the cats who trotted out to greet us, he rooted around in his duffel for the present he had brought: a pen and ink sketch he had done of me dozing under a tree by the river, my hands clasped in my lap, my long skirt spread out around me, my head flung back. He had matted it and put it into a cheap black frame, and when he handed it to my mother he said, “It doesn’t do her justice, of course. But I thought you might like it, just because it’s Wynn.”

  My mother looked at it, startled. “But it’s wonderful,” she said. “You did this, Patrick?”

  They were touched. They agreed that it captured their
daughter perfectly, and that it was a lovely thing in itself. My father fetched a hammer, and after some discussion they hung it in the living room next to a small drawing I had done years ago of the two of them playing chess at the kitchen table. It depressed me to see the two drawings side by side: next to Patrick’s spare simplicity, mine seemed bloated and fussy.

  “I can’t imagine why you still have that thing hanging up,” I said.

  “We love that little drawing, Wynn!” my father insisted.

  “How old were you when you did this?” Patrick asked me.

  “I’m not sure. Fifteen?”

  “Fourteen,” my mother said. She always knew these things. “The winter you were in ninth grade.”

  Patrick glanced at me. “It’s very good work.”

  My parents beamed at him—the sure route to their approval was to praise their daughter’s art. “Wynn is much too modest,” my father said. “That’s one thing you’ll learn about her.”

  The drawing, for all its flaws, was full of feeling, full of me, in all my adolescent exuberance. Even I could see that.

  “I was a child.”

  “I think you must have been a remarkable child,” Patrick said.

  “I doubt it.” I hesitated. The drawing I had done suddenly seemed unbearably melancholy; the freedom of it, the ease of the line, were things that had become alien to me. And the affection for the subjects was almost palpable. “But I was a happy child,” I said, and was appalled to find my voice breaking. “It was a long time ago.”

  “Not so long.”

  “Longer than you’d think.”

  After dinner, I showed him where he would sleep. Our house had no real guest room, just a tiny attic area under the eaves where there was barely space for a cot. “It’s a bit inconvenient, but it’s the best we can do in this small house,” my father said behind us on the narrow stairs. I had a panicky moment, expecting Patrick to say, “Well, why don’t I just sleep with Wynn?” But of course he said no such thing. He flung down his bag obediently, asking my father questions about the age of the house and the changes my parents had made in it.

  The sleeping arrangements hadn’t been an issue when I brought Alec home; I was quite happy to kiss him good night at the attic stairs and retire to my own room. But it was maddening not to be able to sleep with Patrick for three whole nights. It wasn’t so much sex I missed as comfort. As I lay there before sleep in my old bed, I tried to figure out what was wrong. I had dreaded the visit, but it was going more smoothly than I expected. My parents had warmed up to Patrick, though they couldn’t spend much time with us. My father was busy; my mother said she had a ton of work piled up in her darkroom. She’d had bronchitis during the winter, and was left with a cough she couldn’t shake. She and my father bickered about whether or not she should see a specialist, and one evening when it turned cool my father went across the room and arranged a shawl around her shoulders. It occurred to me that my parents were aging: Was that what was bothering me? That they were inching closer to death, that someday they would be gone—and then what? What would I do with my anger then? And with my old, frayed love for them?

  • • •

  Marietta was home for the summer; I hadn’t seen her since the fall, though we wrote to each other faithfully. She looked glamorous—very thin, artfully made up, her hair cascading down her back. She and Keith and Patrick and I went out for pizza and beer, and the next afternoon Patrick insisted that Marietta and I spend some time together. He didn’t mind at all. He would borrow my rickety bike and go for a ride.

  “You two are best pals,” he said. “I know you’re fond of me, darlin’, but you’ve known Marietta a lot longer, and don’t tell me you don’t need to talk.”

  Marietta and I spent the afternoon at Osmar Lake rubbing suntan oil on each other and gossiping. She and Keith were just friends now, she said. She was involved with a German boy she had met in her screenwriting class, but he was home in Berlin until the end of August.

  I asked her what she thought of Patrick. She said, “I like him a lot. I thought we all had fun last night. Didn’t you? At least, Patrick seemed interested in Keith’s band.”

  “Yeah, they got along really well.”

  My fears about my secret being revealed had been absurd. All Keith really wanted to talk about was the band he was in and their hopes of getting some hotshot producer in New York to record them. Then Marietta and Patrick had a long, amiable argument about the Dodgers and the Red Sox.

  “Patrick’s pretty intense, though.”

  “Intense? Yes, I guess he is.” I looked over at her. In spite of the suntan oil, she was getting sunburned. Marietta always got sunburned. “Isn’t intensity good?”

  “It’s good for you. He’d wear me out. But you’d probably think Richard was a frivolous twit.”

  “Is he a frivolous twit?”

  She turned her pink face toward me and grinned. “Of course! Why do you think I like him?”

  “You think Patrick is too serious? He’s not really. I mean, no, he is, but he—”

  Marietta reached over and pulled my hair. “Hey! Relax! Richard is perfect for me. Patrick’s perfect for you. What do you want me to do? Fall in love with him? He’s cute, he’s terrific, but he’s your type, not mine.”

  I smiled. “I guess I just can’t believe that everyone isn’t in love with him.”

  “Perfectly natural, dollink. You’re nuts about the guy. He’s nuts about you. Enjoy it while it lasts.” I just looked at her, and she laughed again. “All right, all right! It’s going to last forever. Right?”

  “Right,” I said. I didn’t laugh. “Absolutely right, Marietta.”

  Marietta raised her eyebrows. “Talk about intense!” She looked down at her arm. “I’m burning to death. I’m turning into Joan of Arc, for Christ’s sake. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Marietta?”

  “What?”

  “You won’t say anything, will you?”

  “About—?”

  “About what happened to me. About the baby.”

  She stared at me. “You haven’t told Patrick about that?”

  “I couldn’t.”

  “Wynn, you’ve got to.” She reached over to squeeze my hand. “Listen. You’ve got to get over feeling bad about it. You got drunk and got knocked up. That doesn’t make you a whore or anything!”

  As always, I was struck by how odd it was that for nearly everyone it was only my pregnancy that concerned them, rather than what came after—as if pregnancy were a self-contained state without consequences, like appendicitis, and giving away a child was nothing.

  “It’s not that, Marietta.”

  “Then what in hell is it?”

  I sighed and began to gather up my things. “I don’t know.” I thought of Suzanne Lombard, how we had wept for our lost babies. I remembered her anger, and I wondered what had become of her.

  “Wynn?”

  “I’m being stupid. I know I have to tell him.”

  Marietta pressed one finger into her arm, leaving a white mark that quickly turned red again. “Shit, it’s not fair. Why do I burn and you tan?”

  “Italian granny.”

  “Damn.” She stood up, wincing, and shook out her towel. Then she stood there frowning at me.

  “What?”

  “I’m worried about you. If you don’t tell him, it’s going to mess up your whole relationship.”

  “All right! I’ll tell him!”

  “When?”

  “When I’m ready.”

  After a moment, she smiled at me. “You really do look devastating with a tan, blast you.”

  While we were at the beach, Patrick had taken his bike ride, then mown the grass and raked it as finickily as my father would have done, and put the clippings in the compost. He also fixed the brakes on my bicycle.

  “Isn’t he supposed to be on vacation?” my mother asked.

  “Patrick likes to keep busy.”

  “He’s certainly got a lot
of energy,” she added, as if that were a dubious quality at best.

  We were sitting on lawn chairs. Patrick was with my father in his workshop. From across the expanse of grass, we could hear their voices—not just Patrick’s but my taciturn father’s as well. “What on earth could they be talking about?” she asked.

  “Routers, I would guess,” I said, smiling. “Or maybe hand saws versus power saws.”

  My mother laughed, and that made her cough. I went inside and got her a lemonade and a beer for myself. “You’ve seen somebody about that?” I asked her. She waved a hand, still coughing, and when her cough subsided, she said, “Please don’t worry. I know Dad wants me to see this doctor in Portland, but Dr. Rice says I just have to wait it out. He gave me a prescription for some cough medicine, but it makes me so sleepy I only take it before bed.”

  We sat in silence, drinking our drinks, smelling the fresh-cut grass. It was very beautiful there, and peaceful, the huge square of lawn ringed by flower beds and, up near the house, the carefully tended vegetable garden: my father’s rustic pea fence thick with green vines, the rows of tiny pale lettuces, the wooden supports in place for the tomatoes. I was aware, from time to time, that my parents were amazing. They were both well into their sixties, and yet everything they did reflected hard work, discipline, and that implacable serenity I had grown up with and by which I had defined my own life for so many years.

  “Wynn?” my mother said suddenly. “Why didn’t you want to bring Patrick to see us?”

  I wasn’t prepared for her question, and I didn’t know what to say. I had lost the habit of honesty with my parents. None of your business, was my first thought. But of course it was her business. I said, “I don’t know. For one thing, I wasn’t sure you and Daddy would like him.”

  “Hmm.”

  Her face was still pink from her coughing spell. The lines around her eyes and mouth were deep, her close-cropped hair almost entirely gray. I looked at our hands, close together on the arms of our chairs: mine was fleshy and tanned; hers was thin, the delicate skin age-spotted and papery and the blue veins prominent. Her gold wedding band hung loose on her finger.