My Dearest Friend

by Nancy Thayer

  But here would be comfort. In this house would be comfort. She was going to wrench this much from life.

  How Cynthia would have scorned this place, Daphne thought. The chicken-wire fence was truly ugly. The encircling forest made the house seem more isolated from the world than it was—and Cynthia would have hated that, because she craved the world. Now sixteen, Cyn could never get enough of friends and boyfriends, of admiring teachers and children to baby-sit, tests and challenges, parties, dances, tennis, recitals, plays …

  Of course, Daphne would not be here if Cyn had not first decided to leave. So the question would never have arisen.

  The snake struck: bitterness and anger raced through her veins. Think of something else, Daphne ordered herself; something else, quick. She turned from the house and looked at the sweep of ground around her. She now owned an entire acre of land—so much grass to mow!

  Setting the cup down on the back stoop, she crossed the yard to the wooden shed that stood near the garden, leaning toward the house as if it missed it. As she pulled the doors open, she noted from the squeaks and drag that they needed new hinges. The whole shed needed painting as much as the house. Inside, the concrete floor seemed in good condition, not cracked, but covered with general crud bequeathed to her by the former owners: leaves, dust, seeds, manure, bits of paper, small objects rusted past recognition, bits of rubber, dented empty oil cans, and what had once, not so long ago, been a mouse.

  An old hand lawn mower was also inside, and, delighted to discover it, Daphne eagerly pulled it out from where it was entangled with rakes, spades, and shovels in various states of dilapidation. Taking hold of the splintering handle, she pushed it; it shrieked and caught and would not move. She turned it around and pushed it the other way. It shrieked again, caught, then something gave, and as she pushed it, it whirred noisily around as if it had remembered what it was meant for. Daphne made three swaths across the yard, the mower clattering along merrily, before she looked down to see that it was doing absolutely no good at all. The heavy grass was only bent. The blades were too dull, she supposed.

  She sagged a moment, balancing her weight against the little old mower, waiting for the despair to pass. It was at times like this, when some slight thing thwarted her, that she most strongly felt the need to give up. It was at times like this that she could feel how her entire life, all her talent and potential and hard work, her devotion and perseverance and courage, had brought her only to this: loneliness so deep, tribulations so dense, like the sea of grass around her, that she could never fight her way out. And the things she counted on, hoped for as objects of assistance, like this mower, failed her every time. She sighed, rolled it across the yard, and put it back in the shed. She grabbed up her cup of champagne and headed for the front of the house.

  The view was less demanding here. No unworked garden to chide her vision, no sagging shed. She sank down on the top step and tried to clear her mind, to observe. Light was fading from the sky, colors deepening. Birds were calling out and flicking through the trees. Daphne relaxed, leaned back against the screen door, stretched out her legs. Really, it was very nice here, like living in the middle of a Pissarro. Life imitated art, and the leaves on all the slender or thick-trunked trees were like so many millions of dots, silver-green, blue-green, jade and chartreuse.

  Shadows shifted across the grass like ghosts, then vanished, absorbed into the gray late-evening light. Behind her, her house was dark, and this seemed somehow to make it loom bigger, to take on size and density. In a minute she would go in, turn on the radio, turn on the lights, live in the present. In a minute.

  For now she sat staring. As darkness became complete, the individual trees of the forest were blotted out, one by one, until she saw the edge of her property as all of a piece, one dim and motionless mass. Now if she walked toward the woods, the trees as she came closer would take on life, silhouettes, individuality. Just as in her mind, when she walked deep into memory, the people she had loved and lost and let fade came clear, presented themselves to her in the flesh with their old alluring charm and smiles and voices, and the clarity of their margins, the expressions on their faces, and what they had meant to her, and meant to her still, could pierce her like a hook. For they were inside her, after all, a black mass of significance that she carried everywhere, unlike the forest around her, outside her, which she could always escape, if only by closing her eyes.

  Cynthia. Joe. David. Laura. And Hudson too, though she saw him still, saw him every day. All gone from her now, yet never far away from her thoughts. What was her life about? Shadows?

  Boy, it was amazing how fast a life could get fouled up, Jack Hamilton was thinking. It was amazing. He pulled his old silver Honda into the drive next to his wife’s white Mustang convertible (a present from her father), gathered up the sacks of easy deli foods—salty meats, oily salads, oniony buns—beer, and milk for Alexandra’s bottle, and made his way up the gravel drive into the A-frame house, the first house he had ever owned.

  Here he was, coming home. Dr. Jack Hamilton (although they didn’t use that title here in the East), a college professor, the newest member of the Westhampton College English department, dapper and trim in his gray flannels and blue blazer. Arms laden, still he managed to open the front door. It swung inward, and his two-year-old daughter, dressed in pink, came flying across the room to him.

  “Daddy! Daddy!” Alexandra tackled him at knee level, almost knocking him off his feet.

  Jack set the groceries on the table and bent down to pick her up. He tossed her above his head, brought her down to nuzzle her stomach, his mustache tickling her soft skin so that she giggled and writhed with helpless glee. Her soft fat tummy smelled of baby powder and she wriggled like a puppy.

  Across the long sweep of room, an actress in a dress coated with sequins glittered on the television screen, drinking champagne and looking scornfully at an actor in swimming trunks and a gold necklace. Carey Ann pulled her attention away from the drama and came to greet Jack. Barefoot, she made her way carefully across a floor littered with what seemed to be three million wooden and rubber toys: rock-a-stack rings, puzzle pieces, building blocks, bright pink naked baby dolls.

  “Hi, darlin’,” she said.

  Whatever else Jack would ever think of his wife, he would always think she was the most beautiful woman in the world. She had long blond shimmery hair, huge blue eyes, a perfect figure. Now she was wearing jean shorts and a white T-shirt, and Jack loved the way her nipples showed like buttons through the soft cotton. And Carey Ann loved him too; that showed in her eyes.

  “Glad you’re home,” she said, and leaned forward to kiss Jack, who tried to tuck Alexandra into one arm, but didn’t succeed; their daughter put out her fat hands to push her mother away, crying, “No! Mine!”

  Sighing, unkissed, Carey Ann stepped away, discouraged. “I just don’t know when she’s going to stop that,” she said. She followed Jack into the kitchen to help him unpack the groceries. “I’m sorry the place is still such a mess. I did get all the towels and linens unpacked today. While Lexi napped. And believe it or not, I had all her toys in the playroom, but she insisted on bringing them in here. I don’t know. How was your day?”

  “Cracker!” Alexandra yelled, seeing Jack bring out a box.

  “Fine,” Jack said, handing his daughter a fist of crackers. “Look what I brought for dinner.”

  “Oh, Jack,” Carey Ann said happily, seeing the beers he pulled from the sack. “You sweetie. I’ve been wanting one so much.”

  “Me drink too!” Lexi cried.

  “Here’s your drink,” Carey Ann said lovingly, getting the bottle from the refrigerator and handing it to Alexandra.

  “No! That!” Lexi pointed to the beer bottles in her mother’s and father’s hands.

  “Babies don’t drink beer,” Carey Ann said sweetly. She tried to distract her daughter. “Here, want a bite of salami? Lexi like salami.”

  “That!” Lexi cried. Her peaches-and-cr
eam face scrunched up and turned rosy with anger.

  “I don’t suppose it could hurt her to give her a little sip, do you?” Carey Ann asked, looking at Jack.

  He could see blue circles under his wife’s eyes. “Probably not,” he said. Then he grinned conspiratorially. “Actually, it might make her a little sleepy.”

  “Oh, Jack,” Carey Ann said, but grinned back. She squatted down and held the bottle to her daughter’s lips. Alexandra took a big suck, her eyes widened, and she spat.

  “Yucky!”

  “Thank God,” Carey Ann said under her breath, wiping the spit off the mouth of her bottle. “Now I can have it for myself. Here, Alexandra, here’s your bottle.”

  They spread their feast out on the paper wrappers on the dining-room table. Thirty feet away, at the other end of the room, the great wall of window glowed with early-autumn light, green leaves just turning gold, blue sky. It was after six, but still bright.

  “So?” Carey Ann said eagerly. “How did it go?”

  “Great,” Jack said, smiling. It both amused and pleased him that Carey Ann was so awed by his work, as if teaching freshman English and neoclassic literature required the bravery and courage of an astronaut. She couldn’t imagine how she’d keep a class of twenty-five young people quiet and interested for an hour. As he spoke of students and schedules, she listened intently, shaking her head in admiration. Jack was thirty-one, Carey Ann twenty-four, but she seemed so much younger. Sometimes she seemed so terribly young. (And sometimes that was good, and sometimes not.) “The composition classes will be fun, and easy—I can do that with my eyes closed, it’s what I did at UMKC. But the neoclassic class—God, it’s such dull stuff I’m still worried about how to get the students interested. But hey, I forgot to tell you—we’re invited to a party next Friday night.”

  “Oh,” Carey Ann said, looking down. She began to busy herself with Alexandra, who for once was silent, lying in her mother’s lap, content with her bottle. “Well, I don’t know. I mean, we’d need a baby-sitter for Lexi, and I don’t know anyone yet …” Were those tears in her eyelashes? She kept looking down.

  Jack stared at his wife. She didn’t raise her head. Here we go again, he thought, then with a burst of self-controlled energy jumped up from his chair. “I’m going to run up to the bedroom and change out of these clothes.” He took the stairs two at a time, needing to burn up the anger that had burst inside him. What would make that woman happy? She’d been afraid to leave Kansas because she didn’t know anyone back east and didn’t have any friends in the Westhampton area, and she was a woman who loved being with friends, but here was a chance for her to meet people and she acted as if he’d just suggested a visit to the dentist.

  In a frenzy he stripped off his clothes and hung them up neatly, trekking into the bathroom to put his socks in the hamper; Carey Ann sure wouldn’t be able to say he had left the room a mess, had left his socks for her to pick up. Turning, he caught sight of his face in the bathroom mirror. Boy, did he look grim. He sighed and put the toilet lid down and sat there a moment in his Jockey shorts, trying to calm down.

  He didn’t want an instant replay of last night. Last night had been terrible. He had driven home from the college through a sun-dappled September day, as brilliant as any day he had ever known, and, arms laden with briefcase and groceries, had burst into his beautiful and overwarm house to find his wife and child seated in front of the TV.

  “TV?” he had yelled. “Hey, you guys, what are you doing in front of the TV on a beautiful day like this?”

  It had been a spontaneous outburst, purely curious. He had meant no criticism and had thought there was nothing but enthusiasm in his voice.

  But, “What’s wrong with watching TV?” Carey Ann had said, bursting into tears immediately. “Where am I supposed to go? I don’t know anyone to go visit. There isn’t a neighborhood around here. We’re stuck out in the old country! What am I supposed to do with a toddler? Do you have any idea how hard it is to follow a little kid around all day? It’s backbreaking. Besides, I like watching TV! It makes me feel better to see all those people whose lives are worse than mine!”

  “Worse than yours? But, Carey Ann! What is so bad about your life?” Jack had asked, amazed. Again, he had meant only a question, not criticism.

  But Carey Ann had shaken her head and turned away. “Oh, you can’t understand!”

  She had sunk onto the sofa, head in hands, and cried. Alexandra had watched a few moments, enthralled, then, looking up at her father, had burst into confused tears herself, and there Jack had stood, in his splendid new home, with two of the most beautiful blondes the world had ever seen, bawling their eyes out.

  He had calmed them down, and eventually, after dinner, they had all gone for a walk down their bumpy dirt road. Jack had tried to cheer Carey Ann up with descriptions of his day, his office, the other faculty members and the students, and thought he had been successful. But later, when they were climbing into bed, with Alexandra for once miraculously asleep in her crib, he had reached out for his wife, wanting to make love to her. But Carey Ann had pulled away and begun crying again.

  “Oh, I’m too ugly for anyone to make love to.”

  “Carey Ann!”

  “Well, look. I guess I’m going to have this blubber on my stomach for the rest of my life.”

  “Carey Ann, you’re beautiful. You don’t have any blubber. You’re perfect!”

  “Oh, don’t you lie to me,” she had said, offended, pulling away from him to sit on the side of the bed. “I know. I know how you get to look at all those pretty young carefree flat-stomached coeds all day long, those girls who have nothing to think about but getting dressed!”

  “I think Westhampton College students have slightly higher intellectual concerns than that,” Jack had said, and all right, that had been stuffy, but it had just come out.

  “Oh, right, and I don’t!” Carey Ann had snapped irrationally.

  He had tried to charm her out of her sulks, but nothing he could do worked. “Just leave me alone, please,” Carey Ann had said. “I don’t want to make love. I’m tired.” She had curled up on her side of the bed and fallen asleep instantly, while Jack lay awake for long minutes, staring into the night.

  How had he and his wife become so antagonistic? Were all marriages this way? He wished he had someone to talk to. He was getting the strangest feelings about his life, that it was fouled up, going the wrong way, that he was out of control, that he couldn’t do it right.

  Wouldn’t Carey Ann’s old father back in Kansas be thrilled to hear of this? When Jack had formally asked for her hand in marriage, Mr. Skrags had said, “Jack, I have to tell you that I think I have a pretty good idea of what Carey Ann needs in life to make her happy, and when I look at you, I don’t see it.” Pompous old fart. He and his wife had spoiled Carey Ann terribly; they proudly admitted it. And even if she had married someone who made more money than he did—which would be just about anyone—she’d still have to learn how to boil water and keep house and take care of a baby: she was the one who wanted the baby. She was the one who wanted lots of babies. Not that he didn’t love Alexandra. He loved her more than his own life. But since her birth, just ten months after their marriage, everything had gotten so difficult. Carey Ann, who in her parents’ home had never made her own bed or done her own laundry, hadn’t been prepared to cope with a baby’s never-ending needs, the crying, the wetting, the fevers, the dirty clothes, the endless tending. Not that Carey Ann ever was anything but infinitely patient with their daughter. Still, Jack was beginning to think that she—they—were doing something wrong. These days Carey Ann found it impossible to do any kind of shopping for groceries with Alexandra along because the baby started screaming if she didn’t get what she wanted—cookies, candy, and so on—and yet Jack had seen mothers with babies Alexandra’s age riding along in the baskets of grocery carts, so other mothers must be able to do it. Why couldn’t Carey Ann? But if he tried to talk to her about it or offered
to help, she grew furious or teary-eyed and ending up crying because her mother had always had help around the house. So maybe Mr. Skrags had been right after all: maybe it was all Jack’s fault that his wife wasn’t happy.

  He wanted to make her happy. He wanted that more than anything else in the world. Although he could see how she would think that wasn’t true. After all, he wouldn’t work for her father, and he had made her move here so that he could teach where he wanted. Raised and educated in the East, Jack had finished his Ph.D. at Yale and started his grown-up life with two dreams: to teach English at Westhampton College, where he’d been an undergraduate, and to write novels. He knew he had to save up some money before he could seriously try to write, but in his fantasy/plan for his life he didn’t think that would take him too long. Then, after he’d written a few novels and become famous, he’d be asked to teach creative writing and modern fiction at Westhampton. When he had been asked, right after finishing graduate school, to teach freshman composition at the University of Missouri at Kansas City, he knew his plan was starting to take shape. He’d never lived in the Midwest before, and he thought of it in terms of “vitality” and “brashness.” He thought he would find material there for his future books.

  What he found there was Carey Ann. He hadn’t been prepared for this. Probably there wasn’t any way to be prepared for such a thing—for falling in love so fast. He had met Carey Ann at a party, and that was it. He fell in love with her at once, and fell more in love with her every moment he was with her. She was so beautiful, and so much fun. She was such a happy person, so spontaneous and loving and quick and eager. He had fallen in love with her fast and deep. He’d never stop loving her.

  Carey Ann had fallen in love with him too; loved him still. He believed that, had to believe it to go on. She admitted early on that she, too, had been attracted to Jack for superficial reasons: he was handsome, and had such an elegant New England accent and all those prep-school manners. Then, too, his last name, Hamilton, had appealed to her. It seemed aristocratic and British, unlike the embarrassment of a last name she was stuck with. Even though her father owned a chain of posh department stores all over the Midwest, so that now that name had, if nothing else, a kind of power attached to it, still … Skrags—why, it sounded like a kind of disease a person got from sleeping around too much, Carey Ann had laughingly said.