“Great game!” India said, smiling broadly at Sam, relieved in some way to be out of the conversation. Gail always made her feel as though she had to defend herself, and her marriage.
“Mom, we lost!” Sam looked at her with disdain, and then put his arms around her and hugged her just a little too tight, as he dodged the camera swinging from her shoulder.
“Did you have fun?” India asked, kissing the top of his head. He still had that wonderful little-boy smell of fresh air and soap and sunshine.
“Yeah, it was okay. I scored two goals.”
“Then it was a good game.” They began walking to the car with Gail and her boys, who were clamoring to go out for ice cream, and Sam wanted to join them. “We can't. We have to pick up Aimee and Jason.” Sam groaned at the prospect, and India waved at Gail as they got into their van, and India slid behind the wheel of her station wagon. It had been an interesting conversation. Gail certainly hadn't lost her touch at cross-examination.
And as India started the car, she glanced at her son in the rearview mirror. He looked tired, but happy. There was dirt all over his face, and his blond hair looked as though he'd combed it with an eggbeater, and just looking at him told her once again why she wasn't climbing through bushes in Ethiopia or Kenya. She didn't need more than that dirt-smeared face to explain it. So what if her life was boring?
They picked up Aimee and Jason at school, and headed home. Jessica had just walked in, there were books all over the kitchen table, and the dog was going crazy wagging his tail and barking. It was life as she knew it, as she had chosen to live it. And the thought of living it with anyone but Doug depressed her. This was exactly what she wanted. And if it wasn't enough for Gail, then she was sorry for her. In the end, they all had to do what worked best for them. And this was the life India had chosen. Her camera could wait another five or ten years, but even then she knew she wouldn't leave Doug to go trekking halfway around the world to find adventure. You couldn't have both. She had figured that out years before. She had made a choice, and she still thought it was a good one. And she knew that Doug appreciated what she was doing.
“What's for dinner?” Jason asked, shouting over the frantic barking of the dog and the clamoring of his siblings. He was on the track team at school, and starving.
“Paper napkins and ice cream, if you guys don't get out of the kitchen and give me five minutes' peace,” India shouted over the din, as he grabbed an apple and a bag of potato chips and headed to his room to do his homework. He was a good kid, a sweet boy. He worked hard at school, got good grades, did well in sports, looked just like Doug, and had never given them any trouble. He had started discovering girls the year before, but his greatest foray into that realm had been a series of timid phone calls. He was far easier to deal with than his fourteen-year-old sister, Jessica, who India always said was going to be a labor lawyer. She was the family spokesperson for the downtrodden, and rarely hesitated to lock horns with her mother. In fact, she loved it. “Out!” India shooed them all out from underfoot, put the dog outside, and opened the refrigerator with a pensive expression. They'd already had hamburgers twice this week, and meat loaf once. Even she had to admit that she was lacking inspiration. By this point in the school year, she couldn't think up any more creative dinners. It was time for barbecues and hot dogs and ribs, and time on the beach on the Cape. She settled on two frozen chickens, and stuck them in the microwave to defrost them, as she pulled out a dozen ears of corn and began to clean them.
She was sitting at the kitchen table, thinking about what Gail had said that afternoon, sifting it as she did sometimes, trying to decide for herself if she had any regrets about her lost career. But she was still convinced all these years later that she had made the right decision. Besides, it was a moot point anyway, she told her-self, there was no way she could have continued traveling around the world as a journalist, or even working locally, and still have done the right thing for her children. She owed this to them. And if Gail found her boring as a result, so be it. At least Doug didn't. She smiled, thinking of him, as she put the corn in a pot of water and set it on the stove, and then took the chickens out of the microwave, put butter and spices on them, and put them in the oven. All she had to do now was put some rice on the stove, make a salad, and presto magic, dinner. She had gotten good at it over the years. Not fine cuisine, but fast and simple and healthy. She didn't have time to make them gourmet meals with everything else she did. They were lucky she didn't take them to the drive-thru at McDonald's.
She was just putting dinner on the table when Doug walked in, looking slightly harried. Barring a crisis at the office, he usually came home promptly at seven. Door to door, it was a twelve-hour day for him, or slightly longer, but he was a good sport about the commute, and he kissed the air somewhere near her head, as he set down his briefcase and helped himself to a Coke from the refrigerator, and then looked over and smiled at her. She was happy to see him.
“How was your day?” she asked, wiping her hands on a towel. There were wisps of wheat-colored hair framing her face, and she never thought much about what she looked like. She was lucky, she didn't have to. She had clean, healthy, classic looks, and the braid she wore suited her. Her skin was good, and she looked about thirty-five instead of forty-three, with a long, slim figure that looked well in shirts and turtlenecks and jeans, which was the uniform she wore daily.
Doug set down the Coke and loosened his tie as he answered. “Not bad. Nothing exciting. I had a meeting with a new client.” His business life had been uneventful for the most part, and when he had problems, he shared them with her. “What did you do today?”
“Sam had soccer, and I took some pictures for the team. Nothing terrific.” As she listened to herself speak, she thought of Gail, and how dull she accused their lives of being. They were. But what more could she expect? Bringing up four kids in Connecticut was hardly glamorous, or fraught with excitement. And India couldn't see how Gail's illicit activities could change that. She was kidding herself if she thought that made a difference, or improved things.
“How about dinner at Ma Petite Amie tomorrow night?” Doug offered as she called the kids in to dinner.
“I'd love it,” she smiled, and within the next millisecond chaos erupted in the kitchen. But they always enjoyed their meals together. The children talked about their day, their friends, their activities, while complaining intermittently about teachers and the amount of homework they'd been given. And Aimee blew the whistle on the news that a new boy had called Jessica three times that afternoon, and he sounded really old, like maybe even a senior, and Jessica looked daggers at her. And for most of the meal, Jason provided them with entertainment. He was the family clown, and made editorial comments on everything. Aimee helped her clean up afterward, and Sam went to bed early, exhausted by his soccer game and the two goals he'd scored. Doug was reading some papers from the office by the time India finally joined him in their bedroom.
“The natives seem to be keeping you busier than usual tonight,” he commented, glancing up from the report he was reading.
There was a staid, solid quality that India had loved about him right from the beginning. He was tall and lean and lanky, with athletic good looks, and a boyish face. At forty-five, he was still very handsome, and looked like a college football hero. He had dark hair and brown eyes, and was given to tweeds and gray suits for work, and corduroy pants and Shetland sweaters on weekends. And in a quiet, wholesome way, India had always found him very attractive, even if Gail did think he was boring. And in many ways, he was the ideal husband for her. He was solid and reliable and unflappable, generally, and fairly reasonable in the demands he made of her.
She sat down in a big, comfortable chair across from him, and tucked her legs under her, trying to remember, just for an instant, the boy she had met in the Peace Corps. He was not so very different from the man she sat across from now, but there had been a glimmer of mischief in his eyes then that had enchanted her at the
time, when she was young and filled with dreams of daring and glory. He was no longer mischievous, but he was decent and reliable, and someone she knew she could count on. Much as she had loved him, she didn't want a man like her father, who was never there, and risked and eventually lost his life in the pursuit of his wild, romantic notions. War had been romance to him. Doug was far more sensible than that, and she liked knowing she could count on him to be there for her.
“The kids seemed a little wound up tonight. What's up?” he asked, putting his report down.
“I think they're just excited about the end of the school year. It'll do them good to get to the Cape, and get it out of their systems. They need some downtime, we all do.” By this point in the school year, she was always sick to death of her car pools.
“I wish I could take time off earlier than August,” he said, running a hand through his hair, thinking about it. But he had to oversee some marketing studies for two important new clients, and he didn't want to leave town prematurely.
“So do I,” India said simply. “I saw Gail today. They're going to Europe this summer.” It was pointless to try and talk him into that again, she knew, and it was too late to change their plans for this summer anyway, but she would have liked to. “We really should do that next year.”
“Let's not start that again. I didn't go to Europe till I finished college. It's not going to kill them to wait a couple of years to do that. Besides, it's too expensive with a family our size.”
“We could afford it and we can't cheat them of that, Doug.” She didn't remind him that her parents had taken her all over the world when she was a baby. Her father had taken assignments wherever he thought it would be fun, at vacation times, and taken her and her mother with him. The traveling they'd done had been a rich experience for her, and she would have liked to share that with their children. “I loved going with my parents,” she said quietly, but he looked annoyed, as he always did when she brought up the subject.
“If your father had had a real job, you wouldn't have gotten to Europe as a kid either,” Doug said, almost sternly. He didn't like it when she pushed him.
“That's a dumb thing to say. He had a real job. He worked harder than you or I did.” Or you do now, she wanted to add, but didn't. Her father had been tireless and passionately energetic. He had won a Pulitzer, for God's sake. She hated it when Doug made comments like that about him. It was as though her father's career was meaningless because he had earned his living with a camera, something that seemed childishly simple to her husband. No matter that he had lost his life in the course of what he was doing, or won international awards for it.
“He was lucky, and you know it,” Doug went on. “He got paid for what he liked to do. Hanging out and watching people. That's kind of a fortuitous accident, wouldn't you say? It's not like going to an office every day, and having to put up with the politics and the bullshit.”
“No,” she said, a light kindling in her eyes that should have warned him he was on dangerous ground, but he didn't see it. He was not only belittling the heroic father she revered, but he was casting aspersions on her own career at the same time, who she was, and who she had been before they married. “I think what he did was a hell of a lot harder than that, and calling it a ‘fortuitous accident’ is a real slap in the face.” To her, and to her father. Her eyes were blazing as she said it.
“What got you all riled up today? Was Gail off on one of her tangents?” She had been, of course. She was always stirring the pot in some way, and India had said as much to Doug before, but the things he had just said about her father had really upset her and had nothing to do with Gail. It had to do with her, and how Doug felt about the work she did before they were married.
“That has nothing to do with it. I just don't see how you can discount a Pulitzer prize-winning career and make it sound as though he got a lucky shot with a borrowed Brownie.”
“You're oversimplifying what I said. But let's face it, he wasn't running General Motors. He was a photographer. And I'm sure he was talented, but he also probably got lucky. If he were alive today, he'd probably tell you the same thing himself. Guys like him are usually pretty honest about getting lucky.”
“For chrissake, Doug. What are you saying? Is that what you think of my career too? I was just ‘lucky’?”
“No,” he said calmly, looking mildly uncomfortable about the argument he had inadvertently backed into at the end of a long day. He was wondering if maybe she was just tired or the kids had gotten on her nerves or something. Or maybe it was Gail's rabble-rousing. He had never liked her, and she always made him uncomfortable. He thought she was a bad influence on his wife with her constant complaining. “I think you had a hell of a good time doing what you did for a while. It was a good excuse to stay out and play, probably a little longer than you should have.”
“I might have won a Pulitzer too by now, if I'd stuck with it. Have you ever thought of that?” Her eyes met his squarely. She didn't really believe that, about the Pulitzer, but it was a possibility certainly. She had already made her mark in the business before she gave it up to have children and be a housewife.
“Is that what you think?” he asked her, looking surprised. “Are you sorry you gave it up? Is that what you're saying to me?”
“No, it's not what I'm saying. I've never had any regrets. But I also never thought of it as ‘playing.’ I was damn serious about what I did, and I was good at it …I still am….” But just looking at him, she could see that he didn't understand what she was saying. He made it sound like a game, like something she had done for fun before she settled down to real life. It wasn't “fun,” although she had had a good time at it, but she had risked her life repeatedly to get extraordinary pictures. “Doug, you're belittling what I did. Don't you understand what you're saying?” She wanted him to understand. It was important to her. If he did, it made what Gail had said a lie, that she was wasting her time now. But if he thought what she'd given up was unimportant anyway, what did that make her? In some ways, it made her feel like nothing.
“I think you're oversensitive, and you're overreacting. I'm just saying that working as a photojournalist is not like working in business. It's not as serious, and doesn't require the same kind of self-discipline and judgment.”
“Hell, no, it's a lot harder. If you work in the kind of places my father and I did, your life is on the line every second you're working, and if you're not careful and alert constantly, you get your ass blown off and you die.
That's a hell of a lot tougher than working in an office, shuffling papers.”
“Are you trying to make it sound like you gave up a lifetime career for me?” he asked, looking both annoyed and startled, as he got up and walked across the room to open the can of Coca-Cola she'd brought him. “Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”
“No, but I should get a certain amount of credit at least for my accomplishments. I shelved a very respectable career to come out here to the suburbs and take care of our kids. And you're trying to make it sound like I was just playing around anyway, so why not give it up? It was a sacrifice for me to do that.” She looked at him intently as he drank his soda, wondering just what he did think about her career now that he had opened Pandora's box. And she didn't like what she was seeing in it. It was a real disregard for what she had done, and given up for him.
“Are you sorry you made the ‘sacrifice’?” he asked bluntly, setting the can down on the little table between them.
“No, I'm not. But I think I deserve some credit for it. You can't just discount it.” But he had, that was what had upset her so badly.
“Fine. Then I'll give you credit. Does that settle it? Can we relax now? I had a long day at the office.” But the way he said it only made her angrier, as though he was more important than she was. He picked up his papers again then and was obviously determined to ignore her, as she looked at him in disbelief at what he had said to her. He had not only discounted her career, but her father's
. And the way he had said it had really hurt her. It was a lack of respect that she had never felt from him before, and it made all of Gail's comments that afternoon not only real, but valid.
She didn't say another word to him until they went to bed that night, and before that, she stood for a long time in the shower, thinking it all over. He had really upset her, and hurt her feelings. But she didn't mention it to him when she got into bed. She was sure he was going to bring it up himself and apologize. He was usually pretty aware of those things, and good about apologizing when he hurt her.
But he said not a word to her when he turned off the light, and he turned his back and went to sleep, as though nothing had happened. She didn't say goodnight to him, and she lay awake for a long time, thinking about what he had said, and what Gail had said to her, as she lay beside him, and listened to him snoring.
Chapter 2
THE NEXT morning was chaotic, as usual, and she had to drive Jessica to school, because she'd missed her car pool. Doug never said anything to India about their conversation the night before, and he was gone before she could even say good-bye to him. As she cleaned up the kitchen, after she got back from dropping Jessica off, she wondered if he was sorry. She was sure he would say something that night. It was unlike him not to. Maybe he'd had a bad day at the office the day before, or was just feeling feisty and wanted to provoke her. But he had seemed very calm when he'd spoken to her. It upset her to think he had so little regard for everything she'd done before they were married. He had never been quite that insensitive about it, or quite as blatantly outspoken. The phone rang just as she put the last of the dishes in the dishwasher, and she was going to go to her darkroom to develop the pictures she'd taken the day before at soccer. She had promised the captain of the team that she would get them to him quickly.
She answered on the fourth ring, and wondered if it would be Doug, calling to tell her he was sorry. They were planning to go out to dinner that night, at a fancy little French restaurant, and it would be a much nicer evening if he would at least acknowledge that he had been wrong to make her career sound so unimportant and make her feel so lousy.
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