The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1

by Douglas Kennedy

  “Don’t give your mother too hard a time,” she told him. He just gurgled in response. Then she leaned over and did something highly unusual—she hugged me. Not a big, all-enveloping, let-me-comfort-you-with-maternal-warmth hug—but nonetheless a hug. It was something Mom rarely dispensed.

  “You know where to find me if you need me,” she said, then drove off.

  The next day, at the library, Estelle said, “I really liked your mom. A complete original.”

  “That she certainly is,” I said. “But sadly, not the happiest camper who ever walked the face of the planet.”

  “Hey, it comes with the territory.”

  “What territory?”

  “Being an original . . . which is a little easier in a place like New York. But in small-town Vermont? It’s like being a cyclone trapped in a well. Lots of combustion.”

  “That’s a polite way of putting it,” I said.

  Certainly I wasn’t going to turn into a trapped cyclone in Pelham. I was working very hard to maintain a bright perspective on everything. The job in the library wasn’t exactly taxing—stacking books, checking out books, ordering books, dealing with the few members of the public who crossed our doors. If we had eight to ten visitors a day, it was an event—though once a week, all twelve kids from the local primary school came in and caused pleasant mayhem for around an hour. Otherwise, there wasn’t much in the way of work to fill up my five-hour day.

  “Are you sure you need an assistant?” I asked Estelle after my third week there.

  “Of course I don’t,” she said. “But I do want the company . . .”

  Estelle was really good news—funny, bright, and incessantly curious. Bar my father, she was about the best-read person I’d ever met (“Well, what else am I supposed to do around here?”). She made a point of spending one weekend a month in Boston, to visit the Museum of Fine Arts, make a concert pilgrimage to Symphony Hall, haunt the used bookshops around Harvard Square, and eat cherrystones and halibut at some place on the harbor.

  “Didn’t you ever think of getting a job down there?” I asked.

  “Sure, I thought about it when I was working in Portland. And after George died, I did think, Now’s your chance.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Myself, I guess,” she said, lighting up a cigarette. “Like there’s no reason for me to stay here—except the library, which is my baby, but which is never going to be more than what it is right now. But . . . I don’t know . . . something has always kept me from making the leap. Fear, maybe . . . even though I know that sounds kind of lame.”

  “No,” I said, “it doesn’t.”

  She looked at me and smiled, and said, “Someone once said that the biggest roadblocks you encounter in life are the ones you construct for yourself.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  She offered me a cigarette from her pack.

  “You’re still young.”

  “True, but I often feel as if I’ve really shortchanged myself.”

  “Welcome to adult life. Anyway, you can still do something about it.”

  “Like what? Leave Dan?”

  A long pause.

  “I have thought about it,” I said.

  “Are things that bad between you?”

  “Not really. Just a little . . . static, I guess would be the right word.”

  “Static isn’t an uncommon thing in most marriages. Anyway, you’ve had a couple of big changes over the past few months, not to mention . . .”

  “I know, I know—getting shut out of Bland’s house. And yeah, I know I should be patient, and yeah, I know I should also take into account all the upheavals, and yeah, I know I’m probably being very hard on him . . .”

  I stubbed out my cigarette, and reached for another.

  “How long have you been together now?” she asked.

  “Since my freshman year at college.”

  “And there’s been no one else?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, that’s admirable,” she said.

  “And a little boring too?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “No, I did.”

  I lit my cigarette.

  “You never heard any of this from me,” I said.

  “Don’t worry—I am the only person in Pelham who believes in keeping a confidence. But if I may impart a small piece of advice, it’s this: hang in there. Dan strikes me as a pretty good guy, and as you may know, he’s made a very good impression in town. People do like him. And though it might be difficult now, a certain equilibrium usually returns to a marriage if all the basics are right . . . and if he’s not doing anything drastic like cheating repeatedly on you or beating you up all the time.”

  “Cheating repeatedly?” I asked.

  “All men cheat.”

  “Did your husband?”

  “No, George was too boring for that.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “A little drama wouldn’t have hurt things. But George didn’t do drama. The fact is, George didn’t do anything out of the norm.”

  “Nor has Dan.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “I know the guy. And even if he wanted to cheat, he hasn’t.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because, like most med students, he’s been too damn busy over the last four years.”

  Though I knew I had a confidante in Estelle, I made a decision not to bore her further with my personal stuff. I didn’t want to be defined by my problems, and there was a deeply ingrained New England side of me that considered it inappropriate to speak about personal mess. Anyway, the mess wasn’t that appalling. Though the apartment was cramped, we were both so relieved to be out of that damn motel that we didn’t complain about the constrained space in which we were operating. On the contrary, every time I saw Billy around town, I would always tell him how pleased we were with the great job he had done for us. And he was so committed to seeing things right for us that he often showed up at the apartment, toolkit in hand, wondering if there was anything that needed repairing.

  “I think that guy has a crush on you,” Dan said to me one evening.

  “Oh, please,” I said.

  “You should see the way he looks at you.”

  “Well, there’s nothing wrong with that . . . unless, of course, you’re jealous.”

  “That is a joke, right?”

  “Yes, Dan. That is definitely a joke.”

  I quickly changed the subject, because as part of my new domestic strategy I was trying to avoid all conflict between us. Ten months, three days—that was the length of our sentence in Pelham. The time would pass, I told myself.

  “There’s only one way to live here,” Estelle said one morning. “Leave as often as you can.”

  But as we had still “just arrived” in Pelham, I wouldn’t be venturing far beyond its boundaries. So the day’s routine became the routine of my days. I’d get up with Jeff at six and make breakfast. Dan would leave for work at seven-thirty. I’d do household stuff until it was time to drop Jeff off at Babs’s house. After that, I’d grab a muffin and a coffee at Miss Pelham’s and head to the library. At two, my working day was done. I’d pick up Jeff at Babs’s house, and then load him in the car and drive over to Bridgton, where there was a Stop-n-Shop supermarket that had all the stuff you couldn’t buy at Miller’s—though I made certain I did purchase at least $5 of essentials at Miller’s every week, otherwise my lack of custom (bar the morning paper and cigarettes) would be noted. On the days when I didn’t have to go to the supermarket—and if it wasn’t raining—I’d drive Jeff and myself over to Sebago Lake and wheel him for half a mile along the path that had been cut by the water’s edge, always marveling at just how damn beautiful it was, how limitless it seemed.

  Then it was home to get Jeff fed. After that, I would get dinner ready and finish up any other domestic or child-care chores. Dan would arrive back around six—though it could be later if he had to
make an early-evening house call, or had to visit a patient at Bridgton Hospital. Dan loved spaghetti and lasagne, so I did my best to oblige—though three days a week we did eat lamb chops or an omelet or meat loaf.

  We always tried to have wine with dinner, although Dan would restrict himself to a glass or two. Most of his evenings were now spent studying big, weighty textbooks on orthopedics because my husband had now decided to become a “bone man” and to pursue a residency in orthopedics at the end of our year in Pelham.

  I only discovered that Dan had made this decision when, one morning, Tom Killian, the local postman, dropped by the library to ask if we had any new Hornblower novels in stock, and to mention in passing that Dan must be into some very serious reading right now, as he’d just delivered two big boxes of books to his office. When I got home that afternoon, the books were already stacked up by the easy chair in the living room where Dan usually sat in the evening. That night, over dinner, I said, “That’s a lot of books . . .”

  “Yeah, decided to bone up on orthopedics,” he said.

  “Pun intended?”

  “Yeah—pun intended.”

  “You’ve decided to become an orthopedist?”

  “Certainly thinking about it.”

  “Well, you’re obviously more than thinking about it if you’ve just ordered all those textbooks. They must have cost a fortune.”

  “Two hundred and twelve dollars—postage included. You have a problem with that?”

  “Of course not. What happened to pediatrics?”

  “I’m not ruling out pediatrics . . .”

  “But as you’ve just spent a small fortune on orthopedic textbooks . . .”

  “Okay, I should have talked this over with you. Sorry. It’s just . . . I kind of thought you’d be disappointed that I wasn’t following pediatrics.”

  “I’m surprised, that’s all. I mean, orthopedics is pretty nuts-and-bolts stuff, isn’t it?”

  “I kind of like that aspect of it—and the surgical dimension. There are all these new breakthroughs that might come about in the next ten, fifteen years—hip replacements, plastic joints . . .”

  “Sounds totally nuts-and-bolts to me.”

  “It’s interesting . . . and it will probably be very lucrative.”

  “Lucrative?” I said, repeating the word with considerable surprise. “Since when did you get interested in lucrative?”

  “Is this how you want to live for the rest of your life?” he asked, pointing to the apartment.

  “This is not how we’re going to live forever. This is a stopgap solution . . .”

  “I know what it is, and I know that once we’re in the Bland place, we’ll be much happier. But I still don’t want to be thirty-five and trying to support a family on eight grand a year.”

  “You could still be a very successful—and very good—pediatrician . . .”

  “And deal with chicken pox and diaper rash and tonsillitis until I’m sixty-five? Where’s the challenge in that?”

  “I just wish you’d have told me you were thinking this way.”

  “Okay, Hannah. Point taken. It won’t happen again.”

  What else could I say but “Fine”—and wonder why Dan always had to be so damn secretive, why he kept such big considerations to himself and refused to involve me in the decision-making process. But not wanting to travel down that road, I decided to accept his apology and let him get on with his nighttime studying of all things orthopedic.

  So after dinner five nights a week, Dan would curl up in his armchair and plunge into his textbooks, making copious notes on yellow legal pads. The apartment was so small that it was impossible for me to do anything but read while he studied—though I did negotiate an hour every week when he put down his books and we watched reruns of Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In together. Otherwise, I read novels and was in bed most nights by ten-thirty.

  Day in, day out, my routine hardly varied. Dan often worked Saturday mornings, but we always tried to take a long walk somewhere on Sundays. We were never invited around to anyone’s house—largely because the only other young couples with children in Pelham were people like Nurse Bass and her husband, who looked upon us as college types with whom they had nothing in common. Even Estelle, for all her friendliness at work, didn’t want to socialize after hours (she hinted to me on several occasions that she treated home as a refuge and didn’t see the need to have friends around, especially as she escaped often to Portland or Boston). So we really had no one to hang with except each other—and given that Dan was filling every possible hour with study . . .

  Meanwhile, Dad was back in the news, having just been interviewed on ABC bitterly condemning the decision to award Henry Kissinger the Nobel Peace Prize with Le Duc Tho for negotiating a cease-fire in Vietnam. It was a “cease-fire”—as Dad pointed out in his best outraged patrician tones—that had yet to come into effect.

  I called Dad a few days later. He was, per usual, affectionate and harried. He didn’t have long to talk, as he was rushing to a lecture, but he was glad that I saw him on national television, and now he was certain that he was at the top of the Nixon Enemies List, and did I read his article in Harper’s with the very clever title “Dynamite Money” about the machinations that went on to award Kissinger the Nobel? And how were things in Pelham? And was his grandson doing well? And got to go now, will call in a couple of days, hope you are keeping busy up there.

  Well, by my estimation, I was reading five books a week, which did keep my nights busy. Meanwhile, the job was steady. Bar the usual daily banter with Estelle, it was free of all surprises. Jeff slept progressively better. Dan and I continued to make love twice a week, and though I tried to show some interest, I continued to feel detached throughout, occasionally faking orgasm just to let him think I was engaged in the event. We continued to act as if all was well between us.

  “There are times when I feel as if I am simply some cardboard cutout, being moved from place to place, day in, day out,” I told Margy during one of our weekly phone calls. “And I don’t know how to break out of this, except by doing something dramatic, which would mean creating havoc. And as there is no way I am going to create havoc, I have no choice but to continue acting out this damn role I’m in. Come June we will be gone from Pelham, and we’ll either be back in Providence or in some third-rate city like Milwaukee or Pittsburgh for Dan’s residency in fucking orthopedics, because Dan really prefers third-rate cities, and I’m too damn lame and tame—hey, that rhymes!—to do anything about it, and I’ll probably get pregnant again, and I might as well write off my entire life, and I think I’m really beginning to sound like a self-obsessed bore, and maybe I’ll get off this subject and ask you what’s going on in your life?”

  Margy laughed. “Well, at least you haven’t completely lost your sense of humor.”

  “Yeah, that surprises me too. But come on, make me jealous and tell me everything that’s going on in the big bad city.”

  “Well, on the guy front, it’s the usual Bum of the Month club—the last loser being a would-be playwright named Mark who had a production of his latest magnum opus in some warehouse way downtown. Anyway, the play was all about the persecution of St. Sebastian for his boy love predilections—and the subject matter should have told me something, because two days after the opening, Mark broke down and confessed that he was, in fact, a switch-hitter. As in: bisexual. As in: ‘Oh shit, do I know how to pick ’em.’

  “Anyway, the somewhat better news is that it looks like my days in gift shop sales are numbered, because I have a new job.”

  “That’s fabulous, Margy.”

  “No, it’s public relations, which isn’t fabulous, it’s about selling the fabulousness of others. Still, it’s one of New York’s biggest PR firms, a friend of a friend of my mother got me the introduction, I did the interview and seemed to make a reasonable impression, because they’ve offered me what’s called a junior account executive.”

  “So why aren’t you sounding thrille
d?”

  “Oh, listen, I’m not depressed about it. It’s just that schmuck Mark rang up yesterday to ask me if I could return his original Broadway cast album of Company, and when I said I had just landed this job, do you know what he said to me? ‘Can you think of anyone who said, when they were ten years old, “When I grow up I want to be a public relations executive”?’”

  “I hope you didn’t listen to him.”

  “Of course I did—and of course I think he has a point, and I feel like I’m totally selling out, because didn’t Haldeman and Ehrlichman and all those other Nixon henchmen start out in public relations?”

  “Yeah—and Hitler was a housepainter . . . but that doesn’t mean all housepainters are fascists.”

  “Bad analogy, Hannah.”

  “You know what I’m saying. . . . Look, if you don’t want the job,” I said, “don’t take it. Vanish off somewhere.”

  “You mean, maybe I could do something really worthy, like teach in Indonesia with the Peace Corps and then come back to New York in two years and discover that I’m qualified for nothing, and that everyone chasing all the junior account executive positions is now three years younger than I am, and I’m back at square one again. No, this is a start at something . . . and at least you get to drink a lot in public relations, so that’s one compensation. Listen, why don’t you negotiate some time off for good behavior and get down here for the weekend?”

  That night, I broached the subject with Dan—now that Jeff was no longer dependent on my breast for food and was sleeping through the night.

  “I think you should do it,” he said, cutting me off.

  “You sure?”

  “Babs can look after Junior all day, I can deal with the nights, and anyway, you could use a break from all this, I’m sure.”

  To say that I was pleased was the understatement of the year. I was completely amazed and thrilled that Dan was so understanding, so willing to give me the time-out that I desperately needed. More than that, for the first time in some months I found myself thinking: He’s actually my ally.

  The next afternoon, after picking Jeffrey up from Babs’s house, I drove over to Bridgton to the only travel agent in the area, and reserved a place on a flight in ten days’ time from Portland to LaGuardia on Eastern Airlines. The cost of the flight shocked me—nearly $100 round trip. But then I did my sums and worked out that, thanks to the little I’d saved from my $60 per week paycheck, I could afford to splurge, figuring that I might spend, at most, another hundred dollars during the four days and three nights I was there.