Back In the Game

by Holly Chamberlin

  But did a companion ensure companionship? No, it certainly did not.

  Consider the couple with the matching beach towels. The woman was reading a big, fat paperback novel. The man was sleeping, his legs sprawled and his mouth open. He let out a ferocious snore and I felt a moment of sympathy for the woman, though she didn’t so much as flinch.

  Consider the couple with the bright yellow umbrella. She was listening to something—music, a talk show—on an iPod, earphones blocking the sounds of her children’s whoops and cries. The man was twisting the dials of a transistor radio that must have been forty years old, that or a good reproduction of an old machine.

  Consider the couple that had brought their gear in a little red wagon, or the three girls in bikinis, or the two older women in floral print one-piece bathing suits. Each of these people was talking on a cell phone.

  Not one person in sight was having a conversation with the person next to them.

  “Heads up!”

  I ducked again. It was the same teenaged boy, retrieving the same plastic ring.

  “Sorry,” he said again.

  “That’s okay,” I said. “Have a nice day.”

  Yes, I thought, it’s okay to be alone.

  “Another round of oysters?”

  I laughed and held up my hand. “God, no! A dozen is my limit.”

  The bartender smiled. “I love those Malpecs, man. Can’t get enough of them.”

  I’d stopped into a restaurant in Perkins Cove for a light dinner before the drive back to Boston. The view from the upstairs bar was spectacular. I felt utterly relaxed, if a bit sandy.

  I ordered another glass of wine and was considering the mixed berry dessert when a man in chinos and a dress shirt opened at the neck sat on the stool next to mine.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Hi,” I said back.

  We smiled. I liked his face. He ordered a dozen oysters and a glass of the same Pinot Grigio I was drinking.

  The bartender nodded at me. “You two know each other?”

  The man looked puzzled.

  “We ordered the exact same thing,” I explained.

  The man smiled again. “Ah, great minds and all. I’m Nick, by the way.”

  I introduced myself. Nick told me he was a real estate agent with a large local group. I told him I taught sociology at Northeastern. From there, the conversation rambled along nicely.

  “I really should be heading out,” I said finally. “It’s about an hour and a half to Boston.”

  Nick reached for his wallet. “Me, too. I’ve got an early showing tomorrow.” Then he turned completely in his seat so that we were face-to-face.

  “I suppose we should consider each other geographically undesirable,” he said, “you living in Boston and me living in South Berwick.”

  I laughed. “I’ve never even heard of South Berwick.”

  “It’s not far from here. It’s south, close to the New Hampshire line.”

  “Oh.”

  “That means nothing to you, does it?”

  “Well, I do drive through New Hampshire to get to Maine. So I know where the state line is. But beyond that . . .”

  “A New Hampshire virgin. Have you ever been to Portsmouth?”

  “I confess that I have not.”

  “Ah,” Nick said, “here’s a perfect opening for my big question! Would you be interested in getting together some time? I could show you Portsmouth, or some of southern Maine. Unless you’re really opposed to dating someone from where life is the way it should be.”

  I laughed. “I’m not opposed to Mainers on principle. How do you feel about Bostonians?”

  “I’m neutral. You seem nice but I don’t care for the mayor.”

  “What about the Red Sox?” I asked.

  Nick put his hand over his heart. “They’re my gods.”

  “Sure,” I said, keeping to myself the fact that I don’t care one way or another about sports. “Let’s get together some time.”

  Nick walked me to my car and waved as I drove off.

  Yes, I thought, it’s also okay to be with someone.

  Chapter 57

  Nell

  In matters of love it is best to follow your instinct. In the matter of marriage, however, it is best to follow your reason. Sure, he may make your heart flutter and your blood race, but is he on a solid career track? Can he support you in the style to which you would like to become accustomed? If the answer is no, sleep with him and move on.

  —The Business of Marriage: Choosing Your Partner Wisely

  “The men here, darling, are a sorry bunch. You see that one over there, by the ice sculpture?”

  Trina and I had stopped by a party being held in one of the MFA’s large galleries. I wasn’t really in the mood for a formal event, but Trina had enticed me with the notion of dinner afterward at a new restaurant at which it was almost impossible to get reservations. Of course, Trina, with all her connections, pulled off a table for two at nine.

  “The one standing with the woman with a puff of white hair?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen hair that—round.”

  “That’s his wife,” Trina said with a little snort. “A pathetic little thing, really. Anyway, I slept with him last year. Was it in the spring or the summer? I can’t remember exactly, but I do remember being bored almost to death.”

  “Why?” I asked, stunned. “Why did you sleep with him? He looks old enough to be your much older father. What did you see in him?”

  Trina shook her head at me as if to say, “Will this woman never learn?”

  “Well?” I asked.

  “He’s fabulously wealthy, Nell. And looks have been known to be deceiving.” Trina sighed and looked in the direction of the cheating husband again. “Unfortunately, not in Stanley’s case. Well, I might have expected it. At some point most married men lose the no doubt little sexual skill they had in the first place. Years and years of sex with the same woman dulls their instincts.”

  Did it? I realized I wouldn’t know. I’d never had years and years of sex with anybody, not even myself. Sex was still a largely foreign territory.

  “Still,” Trina went on, “a certain few married men don’t lose their capacity to please. You might consider having an affair with Dan Collins, for example. I’ve heard good things about his prowess in the boudoir.”

  After months of knowing Trina, she still had the ability to shock me.

  “I can’t have an affair with a married man!” I whispered, though there was no one close enough to eavesdrop. “Especially not after what I’ve been through with Richard. It’s so horrible to be the one cheated on. I just couldn’t do to some other woman what Richard did to me.”

  Trina sighed. “Yes, Nell, that’s very nice of you, but you’re assuming the wife cares about her husband and what he does when she’s not around. There are plenty of wives in this town, in every town, who are more than happy to turn a blind eye to their husbands’ infidelities. As long as he comes home eventually and continues to pay the bills, he’s allowed to have his fun on the side.”

  I glanced around the room. The women were well and expensively dressed. Their voices were low and modulated. No doubt they had beautiful homes and vacationed on Nantucket. But how many of these wealthy, pampered women lived lives of quiet desperation?

  “I can’t imagine being that sort of woman,” I said. “It sounds like such a painful and lonely life.”

  A waiter glided up with a tray of champagne and we exchanged our empty glasses for full ones. When she had glided off, Trina touched her glass to mine.

  “You can’t imagine being that sort of woman,” she said, “because you lived with a man you loved. Don’t assume all wives love their husbands. For any number of reasons they might welcome their husbands’ attention otherwise directed.”

  “I suppose,” I said. “It just seems so horribly sad, so wasteful. Why would a woman rather settle for a loveless marriage than look for happiness?”

  Trina l
aughed lightly. “Dear Nell. Again you’re assuming the wives of whom we speak are unhappy with their lot. One hopes—and suspects—that they are having their fun on the side, too. Take Catherine Harrington, for example. See her standing by the huge floral treatment in that appalling green dress?”

  I nodded. The dress really was appalling. How had I not noticed it before?

  “She’s been married for almost twenty-five years and for the last five has been madly in love—and involved—with her doctor. Her husband goes his way and Catherine goes hers. She has her cake, darling Nell, and she’s eating it too, passion with one man and financial stability with another. One really could be envious.”

  One could be envious or one could feel slightly ill.

  “The sanctity of marriage. What a joke.”

  Trina drained her glass of champagne. “Marriage is what you make it,” she said. “It’s not inherently good or bad. Really, I wish morality would be eliminated from the notion of marriage.”

  “Then why get married in the first place,” I argued, “if there’s no moral imperative to remain faithful?”

  “Financial reasons, darling Nell. Companionship. Social acceptance. As marriage was in the beginning, it is now and ever shall be. Human nature without end, Amen.”

  “Doesn’t anyone play by the rules anymore?” I asked foolishly.

  “No one ever really did, darling Nell. Ah, here comes our waiter. I am parched.”

  I didn’t believe that, of course, that nobody had ever played by the rules. It was just Trina overstating her case again. Consider my parents. Neither had ever cheated on the other. I didn’t know that for a fact—I’d never asked them such a bold question—but I knew they were faithful to each other the way I knew . . .

  I took the offered glass of champagne.

  The way I knew what? The way I knew that Richard was faithful to me? Until, of course, the night I learned that I knew nothing at all.

  I turned to Trina. “You were married to Miles when you had sex with that old man, Stanley. Do you always have affairs while you’re married?”

  “Of course,” she said, as if again surprised I’d ask such a silly question. “How else am I supposed to entertain myself? How else am I supposed to find my next husband?”

  Of course. Always looking to improve on the current situation. The grass is always greener.

  A thought suddenly occurred to me.

  “What happens if a husband cheats on you?” I asked. “What happens if he falls in love with someone and wants a divorce? What happens if he discovers you’re having an affair and throws you out?”

  I thought I saw a flicker of something dark, fear maybe or suspicion, cross Trina’s face. I might have imagined it.

  “None of those scenarios has played out yet,” she replied briskly, “but I daresay any of them are within the realm of possibility. But as long as I have a good lawyer—and I do—I’m sure I will be just fine.”

  “You might be just fine, but how will you feel?” I pressed.

  Now I thought I detected a flicker of annoyance dash across Trina’s unlined face. “Nell, darling, I appreciate your concern, if that’s what this is, but I assure you I will feel fine, too.”

  “You never know how you’re going to feel until you feel it,” I told her. “Trust me, Trina. Everyone underestimates or overestimates her emotional capacities. I certainly had no clue as to my own strengths and weaknesses until Richard and I divorced.”

  Trina studied me for a long moment. I didn’t look away. I wondered what she was seeing. Finally, she said: “There’s a lot more to you, Nell, than there is to me. You’re sensitive. I simply am not.”

  I studied the woman I had begun to consider a friend in return. “Yes,” I said after a long moment, “I don’t believe that you are.”

  Chapter 58

  Laura

  If you find your interest in your spouse waning over time, don’t despair and waste money on a therapist. Everyone gets bored with the same old same old. Recall that old adage: Familiarity breeds contempt. Watch the great actors of our time and take notes on how to fake it.

  —101 Tricks to Help You Survive the Inevitable Decline of Love

  “None of those weird names. I can’t stand that.”

  “Oh,” I said, “I agree.”

  Matt and I were at his new condo in Charlestown. He liked us to be there rather than at my apartment. He thought it was too small, and he didn’t like sleeping in a bed where another man had slept with me. It made him feel bad, he said; it made him remember that his wife had had sex with another man.

  I didn’t ask Matt how many other women had slept in his bed, after Jess and before me. In any case it was different; those women hadn’t been his wives, so I really didn’t care.

  Anyway, we were talking about baby names.

  “What about family names?” I asked. “You know, like people name their child after their grandmother’s maiden name or something. Like, I don’t know, Finnerty.”

  Matt made a face. “Finnerty? As a first name? It sounds ridiculous.”

  I kind of liked it; it was my mother’s mother’s maiden name. But with Matt I was all about keeping things calm and happy.

  “Well, okay,” I said, “maybe that’s not a good example. But, well, how about Keats? In honor of my parents.”

  Matt sighed. “Laura,” he said, “I don’t want to be difficult here, but Keats is a last name. Keats Fromer? It sounds—it sounds stupid. Even stupider than Finnerty Fromer.”

  “Oh.”

  “Do you want a soda or something?” he asked. I shook my head. Matt walked to the kitchen. I noticed the very top of his head was just beginning to go bald.

  Matt came back from the kitchen with a Diet Coke and slumped back on the couch.

  “What about your parents’ first names?” he asked. “What were they again?”

  I felt the sting of tears. I’d told Matt like a million times. How could he have forgotten?

  “Mary and Lucas,” I said, and it was really hard not to scold him.

  Matt nodded and took a sip of his soda. “Oh,” he said finally. “You know, here’s another option. Your diamond originally belonged to my great-grandmother Alice. That’s a nice name, don’t you think?”

  My daughter was going to be named Alice.

  “What if we have a boy?” I asked dully.

  Matt scooted to the edge of the couch, excited. “Here’s the beauty of it,” he said. “My great-grandmother’s last name was Alexander! We could name a boy Alexander and call him Alex. It’s perfect. Even better, if we have a boy and a girl we have Alice Alexander all over again!”

  I forced a smile. “Okay. That sounds good.”

  Matt beamed; at that moment he looked about twelve. It annoyed me for some reason.

  “Wow, Laura,” he said, “I am so glad we’re on the same page with this!”

  “Me, too.”

  “And I was thinking,” he went on. “I was thinking that I really want our son to play football. Now, before you say anything, just hear me out.”

  I wasn’t going to protest. There was no point.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Matt drained his soda before going on. “I know the moms don’t like the idea of their boys playing football, but trust me, it’s no more dangerous than soccer, and every mom these days wants their kids to play soccer. I want our son to be an all-American kid, a football and apple pie sort of kid, you know?”

  I nodded and Matt talked on. And I wondered if he really knew that I, Laura Keats, was in the room with him, listening to his plans for his children. I suddenly had the feeling that any woman could be sitting in this chair, any woman of childbearing age, tall or short, dark or light, it wouldn’t matter because in the end, all Matt really wanted now was a family.

  Any woman would do.

  Matt, I realized, was using me as totally as I was using him.

  When Matt had gone to bed, I went online—he has a home office that’s really mostly a shri
ne to football—and started to research local suburban school systems. This was the sort of information you couldn’t find in a phone book; since leaving Duncan, I’d become a bit better at the computer.

  Winchester. Brookline. Marblehead. Cape Point.

  Yes, Cape Point looked very nice, a great place to raise children. A good school system, beautiful houses, a country club, some pretty white churches. (Even though I don’t go to church, it would be nice to have a pretty one nearby.) The only problem was that it was pretty far from downtown Boston. I estimated that it would take about two hours to get into the city on a weekday morning, and two hours to get back home.

  I wondered: Was that too far for Matt to commute to work every day?

  I looked again at the house. By the time we were ready to buy something, this particular house would be sold. But I bet there would be another just like it in the area.

  Four bedrooms; two full baths and one half bath; a finished basement—maybe I could get a Ping-Pong table!; a big backyard where I could have Matt set up swings and a jungle gym and maybe even an above-ground pool—and of course, a barbecue; a living room; a dining room—I was glad I’d registered for so much new stuff, including a set of fancy china!; a totally renovated kitchen, which meant I’d have to learn to cook more than pasta, but being a stay-at-home mom, I’d have lots of time to learn, right?

  Best of all, the house had a fireplace, a real stone fireplace with a mantel where I could put pictures of my mother and father and my children!

  And I decided right then, thinking about that fireplace, that I didn’t really care if Matt had to commute a total of four hours to work five days a week. He was getting the baby names he wanted. Fine. Then I was going to get the house and the location I wanted.

  I thought it was a fair enough trade-off.

  Chapter 59

  Grace

  Your parents can’t accept the fact that your marriage is over. As often as you assure them that a divorce is the right thing, they just can’t believe a woman would willingly end her marriage. Deal with it. And know that by the time your own daughter gets her first divorce, it will be the norm.