by Nancy Thayer
“Yeah, I knew he was at loose ends this weekend. Canny flew home to Esmeralda on Tuesday. Her private school gets out earlier than the public schools, and she was eager to be with her mother.”
“It’s good that he was here. He helped a friend put his boat in the water, and he spent some time with us. He actually taught Jane how to bake bread.”
“That doesn’t sound like Jane.”
“I know. But she enjoyed it. I think something about being on this island makes us all relax and do things we’d never think of doing in our normal lives. Felicity let me buy her some new clothes.”
“She did? I thought she was completely immersed in her Mother Goddess Save the World Eat Beans role.”
“She’s different when Noah’s not around. She ate meat. Steak for dinner and bacon for breakfast.”
David laughed his low chuckling laugh. “What a temptress you are. Are you coming home tomorrow?”
“Absolutely. It’s lonely here without you. I’ll try to get down here when the children—yours or mine—want to come, but I want to be with you as much as I can.”
“Good. That’s what I want, too.”
Alison heard a sudden roar, and she knew the game was starting. “Go watch your game,” she said. “I’ll call you before I go to sleep tonight.”
* * *
—
During the work week, Jane forced herself to remain pleasant, calm, engaging. And so the evenings she spent with Scott passed without argument.
But when Thursday evening came, as she slipped into bed next to her husband, Jane said, “Scott, I wish you’d come to the island with me this weekend. I enjoyed being there so much, and I know you’d enjoy it, too. David Gladstone’s house is like a contemporary castle. All modern and clean and full of light and air. And it’s huge, so if Felicity and her brood are there, or David’s son, Ethan”—she felt a zing through her body as she said Ethan’s name—“we could still have our privacy.”
“I’m glad you had a good time,” Scott said. “And I agreed we’ll go there for the wedding. And let’s go after our hiking trip in August.”
“I want to go instead of the Wales trip.”
“You’re kidding.” Scott quirked an eyebrow. “We’ve been planning it all year. We’ve made all the flight and hotel reservations—”
“I know that. But we also bought the travel insurance so we won’t lose any money if we cancel.”
“You want to cancel the hiking trip? Jane, honestly, I don’t understand this sudden love for sand and sunshine. You’ve never been a beach girl.”
“Scott, you have to come with me to understand. We won’t have to lie in the sun. We can bike, kayak, sail, play tennis, golf—”
“Yes, but we can’t hike.”
“Well, we don’t have to hike. No one’s holding a gun to your head saying: You Must Hike. Plus, we can certainly walk. I’ve read about all sorts of paths and trails.” Reaching over, Jane put her hand on Scott’s. “Why not come with me this weekend? I think once you’re there, you’ll see what I mean. David’s daughter, Poppy, will be there. She’s being groomed to take over the company, so the two of you can talk business all the time.”
Scott reached for the remote control and clicked on the TV. “I want to catch the BBC news. I think Japan’s moving some money.”
In one supple move, Jane whipped around to sit on her husband’s legs, blocking his view of the television. “We have money. Now I want something else. I want family. I need family. I’m sorry your parents are dead. I’m sorry you’re an only child. But you know you’ve always enjoyed being around my mother, and isn’t it fun talking about Felicity after we’ve seen her? My family is your family, too, Scott. All I’m asking for is one weekend.”
Scott clicked the TV off. He leaned back against the headboard, his striped pajamas so crisp from the laundry it seemed he was still dressed for work.
“You’ve changed,” he said.
“Yeah, I have,” Jane agreed. “That’s what happens in life. Things change. People change.”
“I think you’re trying to blackmail me.”
“What?”
“Before we married, you and I agreed we wouldn’t have children, and now you’ve decided you want a baby. Or even two.”
“Scott—”
“You’re going to work yourself up into a frenzy and accuse me of being aloof and strange because I don’t want children and I don’t want to hang out with your sister’s children and your mother’s fiancé’s daughter’s children. You think if I come see all those adorable kids, I’ll want one of my own.”
Sometimes, Jane thought, she believed Scott could read her mind.
“I have never worked myself up into a frenzy,” she argued.
“No? When you first brought up the subject of children, and I said no way, didn’t you burst into tears and spend all day—a beautiful sunny Sunday—crying?”
“That hardly qualifies as a frenzy.”
“Look, Jane, first of all, move. You’re crushing my legs.”
She sat beside him on the bed, gathering her thoughts. She remembered the advice a law teacher had given her: don’t try to win the enormous argument at first. Just try to get a yes about a small matter. Isn’t it a nice day? Didn’t we meet at the ballet? Give back a yes to show you’re willing to negotiate.
“How about this. If you’ll come to Nantucket for the weekend, I promise I won’t bring up the matter of children for an entire week.”
“I love you, but that bargain won’t work. We made an agreement when we got married and I won’t shift from my position. Anyway, I can’t understand why it’s so important to you. You’ve always said your sister’s family is noisy and undisciplined and chaotic. And now David’s children and grandchildren will be there, too? Sorry. I’m going to pass.”
“Maybe you’re afraid of change, Scott,” Jane challenged. “Maybe you’re so stuck in your rut you can’t notice what you’re missing.”
Scott shrugged. “Maybe.” Reaching over, he turned off his bedside lamp and lay down to sleep. On his side. With his back to Jane.
“Well, I’m changing, Scott,” Jane said quietly. “I’m widening my horizons.”
Her husband didn’t reply. He was very good at not replying.
Jane wanted to hit him with her pillow. She wanted to burst into tears. She turned off her lamp and slid under the covers, and lay there, unable to fall asleep.
nine
On a balmy Friday in the middle of June, Alison stood with her housekeeper, Alani, working on a chart. What had seemed like a delightful idea during Alison’s phone calls with her children and with David’s children now seemed like a complicated puzzle. Everyone was coming for the weekend. Oh, except Noah. And Scott still hadn’t made up his mind. So, on David’s side, that left Ethan, a lone male; and David’s daughter, Poppy O’Reilly; and Poppy’s husband, Patrick; and their two children, Daphne, eight, and Hunter, six. Plus Jane, probably alone, and Felicity and Felicity’s children, Alice, seven, and Luke, five.
So, counting Alison and David, that made twelve people for five bedrooms.
“Mr. Ethan will use the foldout sofa,” Alani told Alison. “He’s very nice, no problem.”
Alani was young, only about forty, but her voluptuous body and languid personality sometimes made Alison wish Alani were her grandmother. She also wished, when she had a free moment for such a frivolous thought, that Alani would do Alison’s hair in one of the many fantastic arrangements Alani did her own. Today Alani had multiple braids curling in and out to make a kind of space-age crown.
“All right, then. Thanks, Alani. If you could bring some towels and sheets and a pillow down for Ethan, I’ll put together the seafood casserole.”
Felicity’s children ate only Annie’s organic mac and cheese, but for this weekend, she had agreed they could ea
t Alison’s five-cheese mac and cheese, while the adults shared the seafood casserole. Tomorrow night, David was planning a cookout with hamburgers, hot dogs, and, for Felicity and her children, tofu hot dogs. Alison wondered if Felicity would choose a hamburger without Noah there to watch her. But no—Felicity’s children would undoubtedly notice.
Now, as she set a pot of water on to boil for the rice—organic brown rice, to be exact—her thoughts were tangled. She hoped everyone would get along, but she worried that would be a problem. Alison had met David’s daughter and son-in-law only once, at a dinner in Boston. Poppy had made it clear that David was her possession and Poppy considered Alison an interloper. Plus, Poppy had mentioned David’s first wife, Poppy and Ethan’s mother, constantly, and in terms that made Emma seem like a gorgeous saint.
Jane could take on Poppy, Alison decided. Jane was as bossy as Poppy and a lawyer in a prestigious firm. Ethan would be the easy one. He could hang out with Felicity.
* * *
—
“Noah, please.” By early Saturday morning, Felicity had packed the children’s suitcases and her own as well, and they absolutely had to leave in the next ten minutes in order to make the drive down to Hyannis and catch the ferry. “It’s beautiful there. Mom wants to see you. The children need some time with all of us together.”
“I don’t know why you keep pushing me on this, Felicity.” Noah forced himself from his computer, where he’d been since five in the morning, when he threw himself from bed, made a strong pot of coffee, and settled down to work. “I have to get this grant done. It’s crucial to Green Food. It’s not a matter of whether or not I want to go, it’s simply that I can’t go.”
Felicity was standing by his desk, looming over him and she knew how he hated that. So she was surprised when Noah suddenly stood up and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Look,” he said with soft intensity, “try to think of it this way. Remember when you were in labor with Alice? You were working hard, and you couldn’t stop. That’s where I am with this grant. I’ve gotten up a head of steam and I’m going to push right on through till I get it done. With you and the children gone, and with me here without any interruptions from my team, I’ll be able to accomplish twice as much as I could on any normal work day.”
Felicity studied her husband. Sometimes his concentrated drive to save the world made her crazy, made her want to run out and buy bags of Fritos and gallons of ice cream and serve it to her family for dinner. But most of the time she admired him for his ethics. And now as he stood before her, she saw the dark half moons beneath his eyes and the slight rash of acne that broke out along his neck when he was stressed.
“Mother.” Alice stood in the door of the den with her hands on her hips. “According to my watch, if we don’t leave in three minutes, we’ll miss the ferry.”
Noah pulled Felicity closer, whispering, “Are you sure that child is ours?”
Felicity smiled, amused that Noah couldn’t see how Alice’s anxious bossiness echoed his own.
“Come on, then,” Noah said to his daughter. He took his car keys from the hall table. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
He was taking time out of his day to drive them from the suburb of Lexington to Hyannis, Felicity reminded herself. Added to the drive back, that was three hours out of his day. She tried to be grateful for that.
* * *
—
Once again, Jane flew in from New York and rented a car at the Nantucket airport. She preferred having her own transportation rather than relying on someone else, and she needed the psychological freedom she felt from knowing she could leave whenever she chose.
As she approached David’s house on Surfside Beach, she told herself to shove the wasp hive of anger at Scott into the darkest corner of her mind. This weekend was not about her; it was about her mother and David. They were offering a luxurious place to stay on a gorgeous island—it would be churlish not to be happy.
But she wasn’t happy. She was angry at Scott, and she was tied up in knots about this baby thing. She had seldom been jealous of Felicity, even if her younger sister was so much prettier and more endearing, but listening to Felicity talk about her children had been difficult, like being thirsty with no water near.
Okay, well, Ethan had made Jane forget her baby cravings, but that was another problem. He was another problem. She didn’t want to be unfaithful to Scott, and yet she also really did. It wasn’t simply a matter of sexual chemistry, it was also a completely irrational need to wound Scott, to perform an extremely childish act of “So there!”
She imagined snapping a shot of Ethan on her phone and sending it to Scott with the message: If you don’t agree to having a child, I’m going to sleep with this man. It would be blackmail, it would be revenge, it would be like a thwarted child pounding a closed door, trying to get her own way.
All of that passion, all of that heat, had to be tamped down the moment she arrived at David’s house. This was her mother’s time. Alison had been an attentive, loving mother and she had been lonely and unhappy after Mark’s death. Now Alison had found happiness again, and she was offering, and David was offering, the exceptional gift of long summer days on a sun-kissed island. Jane vowed to herself that this weekend, just for two days—surely she could manage two days—she would put all thoughts of babies out of her mind. She would hang out with her mother, she would be kind to Felicity, she would ignore Ethan and take long walks on the beach thinking of nothing but the sweetness of the breeze in her hair and the warm sand on the soles of her feet.
David’s house had a circular drive. Three cars were already parked on the bricks. Jane pulled her car behind a Jeep SUV, turned off the engine, and stepped out into the sunshine. The forecast was for a warm, sunny weekend. She leaned against her rental car and closed her eyes, taking a moment to enjoy the sun on her face.
* * *
—
And everyone arrived, in a kaleidoscope of kisses, hugs, loud high-pitched voices, running feet, slammed doors, flushing toilets, and adults yelling, “Wash your hands!” David told the children, in his most serious voice, that they couldn’t go down to the beach unless an adult was with them—that was THE RULE OF THE HOUSE. So while the adults went yammering away as they unloaded their luggage, eight-year-old Daphne, who possessed an uncanny ability for organizing children, led them into the garage to find the vacillating sprinkler for the hose, and soon the four children were on the back lawn running in and out of the water and whooping with glee.
Alison made a large pitcher of iced tea and another large pitcher of pink lemonade. If only, she thought, adults could become friendly with the good-natured ease of children. Patrick O’Reilly worked for an agency representing athletes, and Alison thought Patrick was perfectly suited for the job. He was tall, with the big shoulders and broad chest of a football linebacker, a thatch of unruly red hair, sparkling brown eyes, and an oft-broken nose. It amused Alison, how slender, elegant Poppy could make Patrick hop to it with a word or a look. Poppy was attractive, with the Gladstones’ large blue eyes and glossy blond hair, but she seemed constantly exasperated, and she probably was, with two children at home and an important position at the Gladstone company offices. As Alison surreptitiously watched, she noticed that Ethan and his sister were cool toward each other. Poppy seemed to be the good child, serious and responsible, while Ethan was the irresistibly adorable rebel. Ethan obviously liked Poppy’s husband; today they shook hands in greeting and settled into a discussion about the Red Sox.
Alison set the pitchers on the kitchen table with a stack of paper cups. She’d been at enough children’s birthday parties to know not to use glasses.
“Ethan,” she said, “I’m sorry you have to sleep on the pullout bed.”
“Don’t worry about it. It’s perfect, actually, for what I plan to do.” His grin was mischievous, lopsided.
“Wh
at do you plan to do?”
He said with false piety, “Get a good night’s sleep down here away from the noise of dozens of children.”
Ethan was far too young to sound so happy simply to get a good night’s sleep, but Alison didn’t question him.
The day spilled out like colored marbles, people going in all directions, laughing, running, and swimming. In a great mass, they went down to the beach and bravely tried to swim in the cold ocean water. The children shrieked and complained until Drill Sergeant Daphne took them under her wing and inspired them to build an enormous sand castle. By dinnertime, Alice was under her spell—Daphne was tall and self-confident as well as being the oldest—and the children would have eaten porridge without honey if Daphne had told them that was all they could have.
After dinner, everyone sat out on the deck, enjoying the cool evening air and the changing sky. Felicity kept saying that it was time to put the children to bed, but she was having her second slice of blueberry pie and couldn’t rouse herself from her lounger. Jane sat near her at the round wooden table drinking sparkling water. Ethan and Patrick were cleaning the kitchen, a fairly massive job after so many people had eaten blueberry pie and ice cream. Alison protested that no, she should do the kitchen, they were here on a little holiday, but David took Alison’s hand and led her outside, where he whispered, “Let them clean the kitchen. They’re trying to impress you, to make you like them.”
“But I do like them!” Alison whispered.
“Yeah, well, it won’t hurt to make them sweat a little. You’ve already done so much, making this huge dinner.” He touched Alison’s knee with his own. “Besides, I need you to rest up so you’ve got some energy left for later.”
Alison squeezed his hand.
Jane had her phone on the table, even though she knew her mother did not approve of having it out when there were real people to talk with. She needed her phone for defense—defense against her own rogue desires. Each time Ethan looked at her, Jane experienced his gaze as if it were a caress. How could Jane possibly do what her mother wanted and make friends with David’s children when she wanted to have sex with one of them?
