by Nancy Thayer
“Scott, it’s as if you’ve become a stranger to me. I don’t know you. Has our love, our marriage, been nothing but an elaborate pretense?”
Scott sighed heavily. He walked away from her, around the bed, to stand next to the window facing out. Facing away from Jane.
“Maybe it has. On both our parts. How do I know that you haven’t been lying all along when you said you didn’t want children? How do I know that you weren’t only saying what you thought I wanted to hear?”
“Scott!”
“Wait. Hear me out. I told you I didn’t want children because I want to travel. That’s true. It’s also true that my family was nothing like yours.” He paused. He stood very still, keeping his back to Jane, clenching and unclenching his hands.
Jane waited.
“My mother was an alcoholic. My father was strict and unemotional. I suppose they cared for each other, in their own way. All my life, they repeated the same pattern. Mother would drink more and more, and become incapable of even tossing my clothes into the washing machine or cooking dinner—I’m talking about when I was six years old—so I had to scrounge around and make my own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for dinner. I often wore the same clothes to school for a week. My father would come home later and later until finally he couldn’t bear my mother’s drunkenness one more moment, and then…They would fight. Really fight. For hours. They would throw things. Sometimes they hit each other.”
Jane’s hand flew to her throat. “That’s terrible. Poor little boy. You must have been so frightened.”
“Yes. I was frightened.” Scott turned. He met Jane’s eyes. Tears glimmered in his own. “My father never hit me. Nor did my mother. They did their best to care for me, but they were joined in some kind of sick pattern that they couldn’t help repeating. After their fight, after someone hit someone, the quiet would come, like after a storm. Then, for a while, Mother didn’t drink and Dad came home for dinner, and we were like a normal family. Except I was always on guard, always anxious, waiting for the pattern to start over again. Mother drinking. Dad not noticing. Mother drinking too much. Dad getting angry. The fight.”
Jane’s heart twisted with pity. “I’m so sorry, Scott. I wish you had told me this before.” Her words made anger flare inside her. “And why didn’t you? How could you have kept this from me all these years?”
Scott hung his head. “Would you have married me if I’d told you?”
“Of course I would have!” Jane crossed the room, wanting to embrace her husband, wanting to heal his sadness.
“Don’t, Jane.” Scott stepped back. “I never wanted you to know this about me. I’ve seen a therapist. I’ve learned to cope. But it’s part of who I am. I can’t make the memories disappear. And I won’t have a child. Because I don’t know what kind of father I would be. Frankly, it terrifies me to think of being a father. Just the thought gives me nightmares.”
“But, Scott, you and I are different from your parents!”
“Yes, because we keep ourselves in control. I thought you were in complete agreement with me on this. Isn’t our life full and rich enough for you?”
“We do have a wonderful life. But I want children and I know in my heart that you and I would be good parents. Please, let’s go to a therapist together.”
Scott sniffed. “You mean, go to a therapist who will help me change my mind?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“Be honest. Of course that’s what you meant. You want to change me. Why don’t you change yourself?”
“Scott—”
“What am I saying?” Scott said sadly. “You already have changed. You want children, and you’re not going to stop pushing me for them. You wanted to go to Wales, and now you don’t. I knew I shouldn’t tell you. I knew it would change us, what we have together.”
“But it hasn’t.” Jane swallowed her tears. “I am heartbroken about your childhood, Scott. But that doesn’t change how I feel about you. About us. I love you. Oh, Scott, I’m so so sad about your parents. But I’m glad you told me. It makes me feel even closer to you. I want to hold you, I want to kiss you, I want to tell you that nothing you say will make me stop loving you.”
“And when I say I refuse to have children, you will still love me?” Before she could answer, Scott threw down the gauntlet. “Now that I’ve told you all this, now that you understand me more, will you give up this crazy idea of having children?”
Her breath caught in her throat. “I still want children. With you. I know you, Scott. You are an amazing man, a wonderful, loving husband. You’ll be a wonderful, loving father.”
Scott shook his head sorrowfully. “No, Jane. I mean it. I will not have children with you or anyone.” Abruptly, he pulled his suitcase toward him and zipped it shut. “I’m going now. I’ll be in touch.”
“Scott, wait! At least kiss me goodbye!”
But he walked away, down the hall, and out the door, which he closed very gently. She was alone in the apartment. She knew Scott was shaken by his confession. She understood him enough to comprehend how difficult it had been for him to tell her about his childhood. She understood him so much more clearly now, why he defended himself against intimacy, why he needed to travel. As if he were afraid to stay in any kind of home.
She felt shattered. She sank onto the bed and stared at the wall, this wall that had heard their most wrenching confessions. This weekend she wasn’t going to Nantucket, and good thing, because she was a completely confused, maudlin mess. She stayed in the apartment with the air-conditioning set to high while she huddled in her favorite sweater and a blanket, watching old black-and-white movies and crying. She was not the bright, decisive, professional Jane. She was the miserable, confused, soggy Jane. But she knew what she had to do. She had to choose what she would give up. What she wanted most.
nineteen
On Thursday, Jane received one terse text from Scott. It’s amazing here.
No Wish you were here. No Miss you. No I love you.
Miffed, she’d texted back: It’s amazing here.
And that was so not true. It was hot. It was humid. She had slogged through the heat from their apartment to her office and home again. She hadn’t enjoyed her privacy as much as she’d thought she would. After eating too much popcorn and ice cream while watching old movies Wednesday night, she called friends and met them for dinner. Liz had just had an ectopic pregnancy and had been in the hospital and now had only one ovary. Belinda was getting divorced. Jane told them she was mad at Scott, but their problems were momentous and she was too confused about what she wanted to tell them any more than that.
She packed Thursday night and took her luggage to the office with her on Friday. During lunch, she went to Zabar’s and bought caviar, bagels, imported olives, mustard, chocolates, dried apricots, cinnamon rugelach, cheese sticks, and gourmet nuts. She left work one hour early and headed for the flight to Nantucket.
To her great disappointment, her sister and family weren’t coming to Nantucket until next weekend, but Poppy and her family were there, one happy family. Jane felt unmoored. Unwanted. The outsider.
* * *
—
This weekend Alison was uninterested in Jane or the fact that Scott had gone to Wales alone. Jane’s mother was focusing all her charm and time on Poppy and her kids. Jane could understand this. Poppy was a difficult person to please, and in the service of happy families, Alison was showing Poppy and David how much Alison enjoyed Poppy, how she was including her in everything they did.
So why didn’t David spend time with Jane? Of course, Jane knew, David was beyond enthralled by his grandchildren. He played games with them, swam with them, built sand castles with them, tickled and hugged them, and truly, Hunter and Daphne were beautiful, adorable children. Who wouldn’t be in love with them?
Poppy and Patrick were certainly all about their chi
ldren. Poppy hardly spoke to Jane. It was as if Poppy didn’t even see her. Poppy was so busy with her father and husband and children, and being pregnant with her third child, she didn’t have time for anyone outside the family. Poppy was also a princess, doted on by her father. Jane wished her stepfather were still alive, to dote on her. But of course, if Mark were still alive, Jane’s mother wouldn’t be engaged to David, and none of this Nantucket world would have existed. And of course, Jane’s own birth father was somewhere in the world, not that he ever contacted Jane, and usually she didn’t mind, but now as she sat like an orphan outcast by a happy family, she missed him. Missed what she’d never had.
Really, Jane knew, it was the silence from Scott that hurt. When they had to travel for work, they phoned each other at least every two days just to check in. It had been a week, and Scott had texted only once. No phone call, no email. She could be the one to contact him, but their last argument the day he’d left had been brutal. She could understand his reluctance to have children because of his own childhood, and she was sad for him, it pierced her heart. But hadn’t their marriage shown him how life could be? They had been happy together! Of course they’d squabbled and conflicted, the way any two people would do over years of living together. But they had always known their love was steadfast. They had always trusted one another.
And now they didn’t. She didn’t even know if they would stay married.
So there she was, as ripe as Eve’s apple, hanging by a thread to the bough of her life, ready for trouble, for romance, for someone to choose her.
Ethan.
During the past two weeks, while Jane was plugging away at work and Ethan was running his farm, they hadn’t communicated, and really, why should they? But today, as they played with Daphne and Hunter, a kind of bond wove its way around them, invisible but powerful. Ethan was a champion at playing, Jane realized that. During water Frisbee with Daphne and Hunter, Ethan was a goofball, jumping backward to make a catch and falling deep down into the waves, disappearing for what seemed like hours, and suddenly popping up with a grin, water streaming down his face. When they walked along the shore with the kids, and they all stopped to bend down and study a shell or rock, Ethan’s arm had brushed hers, and something unseen but completely real zapped a streak of lust through Jane’s body. Later, they played an underwater game of passing a carrot from mouth to mouth, no hands allowed, and somehow Jane had taken the carrot from Hunter’s mouth without bumping into his face, but when she’d given it to Ethan, their lips met in a brief, clandestine kiss.
In the early evening, Jane was still in her bikini as she moved around the kitchen, helping her mother make a cold pasta salad to go with the roast chicken they were having for dinner, when Ethan stomped in from the deck, a towel over his shoulders, his hair slick with water and standing up in cowlicks.
“Jane!” On the deck behind him, Hunter was chasing his sister with a dead horseshoe crab. “Whadda ya say we blow this joint? Let’s get cleaned up and go into town and have some adult time.”
Jane paused. His suggestion was provoking so many different responses, she couldn’t speak. She glanced over at Alison.
“Go, Jane.” Alison was preoccupied, washing broccoli. “It will be fun for you to see the town at night.”
“Well…okay, all right, yeah,” Jane said. “I’ll take a shower and change.”
“Me, too,” Ethan replied. “See you back down here in twenty.”
They took Jane’s car because it was a convertible and because it was a beautiful night.
“The stars are so bright on this island,” Jane said as she slid behind the steering wheel.
Ethan laughed. “I agree, and thank you very much, but that’s all the nature I can tolerate right now. Please let’s go barhopping.”
Surprised, Jane said, “I don’t know where the bars are.”
“I do. Just head into town and take the first parking place you can find.”
As she turned out of the drive, she clicked on the radio to a good rock station. She didn’t want to talk. She wanted to change, to shed her good daughter identity for something new, because she certainly wasn’t going to be the good wife. Or even, for that matter, the good lawyer, concerned with what was wrong and what was right. She was wearing a low-cut violet halter dress that made her tan glow. She was going to let the night take her where it wanted.
She found a spot to park on Federal Street, by a jewelry store.
“I’ve always wondered why this street isn’t called Centre Street instead of the street one block over,” Jane said as they strolled down to Main Street. “I mean, this street is more accurately at the center of town.”
“I’m sure there’s some significant historical reason,” Ethan said, and reaching out, he took her hand.
Her breath caught in her throat, but she kept her hand in his.
The vitality of the town was different at this time of night. Children were in bed, and many of the adults were out of their sporty beach clothes, wearing chic dress clothes instead. The scent of expensive perfumes drifted by.
“Hungry?” Ethan asked.
“Kind of. Maybe we could have tapas with our drinks.”
They were given a table on the terrace at the Boarding House, where they sat in the fresh evening air, and for a while they amused themselves watching all the fabulous people stroll by. They ordered specialty drinks, the Sunburned Peach, a concoction of vodka, coconut water, and white peach for Jane, and Summer Fog, made of gin, muddled cucumber, and mint for Ethan.
“Oh, wow,” Jane said after taking a sip of her drink. “I’d forgotten how cocktails are much more potent than wine. We’d better order some food.”
So they ordered spicy grilled octopus, and crab dip with sea salt chips, and angel hair pasta with Romano parmesan and pepper. At first they ate hungrily, savoring each bite, but by the time they’d finished the king oyster mushrooms, they were sated. They leaned back in their chairs and licked the salt and olive oil from their lips.
Jane was aware that she was slightly intoxicated—by the drinks and the food and the anything-is-possible atmosphere of the fresh, warm Nantucket night air. She decided to go with it.
“Tell me about your daughter,” she told Ethan.
He smiled. “My favorite subject. Canny is nine years old and precociously clever. She’s a beauty, like her mother, but more than that, she’s got a kind of self-possession, a poise, that amazes me. She speaks three languages—English, Spanish, and Portuguese, because Peru borders Brazil. And more than anything else in the world, she wants a baby brother or sister.”
“Will she get one?”
“Not from her mother. Esmeralda is obsessed with her country, working to create some reason and stability in the chaos of politics. From me, I don’t know. I take being a father and a husband seriously, but I also feel committed to my summer children’s program. I suppose it all depends on whether or not I meet a woman who wants children and could tolerate me.”
“Are you so terribly bad?” Jane asked.
“Not bad. Just eccentric.”
“I want children,” Jane said, then stopped. She had shocked herself by saying those words to this relative stranger. “Relative stranger,” she said, amused. “That’s what we are, relative strangers. See? Because of our parents, we’re going to be relatives, but really, we’re strangers.”
Ethan smiled. “I think I’ll order coffee for both of us.”
“Good idea.” Oh, Lord, Jane thought, Ethan thought she was drunk. And she was, a little bit. “But it’s true, I do want children. At least a child. I didn’t think I ever would, but over this past year I’ve started longing for one and Scott won’t hear about it. We agreed when we married we’d have no children, and he’s furious at me for changing my mind. My heart. Whatever, and I didn’t change it. It changed me.”
“So that’s why he’s in W
ales and you’re here.”
“Yes.” Jane put one elbow on the table and propped her chin on her hand. “I don’t know how we’re going to resolve this. We’re both stubborn. And now we’re both angry.”
“Why doesn’t Scott want children?” Ethan asked.
“Because they’re a hindrance to the life we had thought we wanted. We both love to travel, and we work hard and like our work and we’re becoming kind of rich, which means a lot to both of us. Neither of us grew up wealthy. We weren’t poor, but there were times when I could sense that money was a problem for my parents, and for heaven’s sake, my stepfather was a doctor! I think it was a drain on them, sending both of us to college. And Scott wasn’t…close…to his parents.” She wouldn’t say more than that about Scott’s childhood. She felt guilty enough just telling Ethan this much about her husband. “He had to pay his own way through school. He got some scholarships, but mostly he had to take out student loans, and I know he felt like he’d never, ever, be out of debt. But we are out of debt now, we’re very nicely in the black. Our circumstances have changed but Scott won’t see it.”
“That’s too bad,” Ethan said. “You would have beautiful children. And I’ll bet if you got him in bed and propositioned him just the right way, he’d do anything you want.”
Jane met Ethan’s eyes. “That’s the sexiest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
Ethan said softly, “I want to kiss you.”
Whoa, Jane thought. Whiplash. One moment she was whining about Scott and Ethan was a sympathetic friend, and suddenly he was sweet-talking her and it was working. She wanted to crawl over the table and into his lap.
“I want to take you someplace,” Ethan said.
“You mean now?”
“Right now. It’s someplace private, where I can kiss you the way I want to.”
“Oh.” Jane sat back in her chair and hugged herself. “Are we drunk?”
“Maybe a little bit. Jane, you had only two cocktails. I don’t think your faculties are affected.”
