Between Husbands and Friends

by Thayer, Nancy

  Yet I was … I won’t say bored. I wasn’t bored. But part of me, the girl in me, was not satisfied. Kate was a godsend to me with her sarcasm and trenchant remarks and good honest lust. That we had two children of the same age who actually liked to play with each other seemed like a good omen for the future.

  It would be far too much to hope for that our husbands would like each other. I toyed with the idea of inviting the Cunninghams over for a casual dinner; Max could barbecue swordfish, I could serve my mother’s lemon cream pie, Matthew and Margaret could play in the yard. But when I met Chip Cunningham at a cocktail party, I ditched the idea fast. If Kate looked like a model, her husband looked like an effing god. Tall, blond, slim, and handsome, he had the floppy blond hair and narrow patrician face of old Boston money. Just looking at him made me feel short, impoverished, and tongue-tied. He was three years older than I was, too, over thirty, which at the time made him seem much more sophisticated and mature.

  It didn’t help that he was so reserved. Kate had told me that this characteristic of his drove her crazy; it was the major source of all their arguments.

  “I’m so glad to meet you at last. Kate talks about you all the time. Well, she would, wouldn’t she, she’s your wife,” I babbled when we shook hands.

  “I’m glad to meet you,” he replied calmly.

  “Margaret loves playing with Matthew.”

  “Yes, Matthew’s quite smitten with your daughter.”

  Max was at the drinks table, getting a vodka tonic for me; I wished I could take a huge inhibition-loosening gulp of it right now. Kate was talking with Andrea Cobb.

  “Kate tells me you’re a lawyer.”

  He nodded. His gaze was kind but intense.

  “Do you get to do exciting things? Will I see you on television?”

  “I’m not that kind of a lawyer.”

  I waited for him to expand on this information. He didn’t. He was so unbelievably handsome. As if in defense, my mind sent every lawyer/shark joke I knew spinning through my head.

  Desperately I said, “I’ve seen your farm. It’s really beautiful.”

  “Yes, we were fortunate to get it.”

  He didn’t look bored or contemptuous; in fact, he seemed quite kind. He just was so quiet.

  “Kate tells me you’ll be buying some horses.”

  “Probably.”

  Max arrived then, and I nearly flung myself upon him in relief. “Max, this is Chip Cunningham, Kate’s husband.”

  They shook hands and muttered a few polite things about Matthew and Margaret.

  “Your property abuts the Jenkinses’, doesn’t it?” Max asked.

  Chip nodded. “Right.”

  I watched carefully as I slugged back my drink. I truly hoped these two wouldn’t hate each other. Max was as handsome as Chip, but he was shorter, and at the moment it seemed like a liability.

  Max said, “I heard that old man Jenkins is getting ready to sell.”

  “Really. Do you know how much land he’s got?”

  Max wrinkled his brow, considering. “I’m pretty sure it’s over a hundred acres.”

  Chip squinted, as if he could see the land lying out before him. “I wonder how it lies. How much of it fronts the road. And you know, I think the stream that runs through our property begins on his land.”

  “Have you met the Jenkinses?”

  “Just the wife. She brought us a homemade pie when we moved in. Seems very nice. I’ve been so busy at the office that I haven’t had time to be neighborly.”

  Max nodded sympathetically. “Abner Jenkins told me I could take a walk through his land sometime. Want to go with me?”

  “God, that would be great. I really don’t want to buy any more land, but I would like to see what it’s like, and of course I’m concerned about who buys it. I’d like to see the countryside remain country up there. It would be a crying shame if someone tried to develop it.”

  The two men launched into a conversation about development around Sussex. I stood dumbfounded, and utterly infatuated with my husband. He was wonderful. He was irresistible. He could make anyone talk.

  I glanced over at Kate, who was listening to Olivia Carlton gab about the church fair. Kate nodded toward our two husbands and gave me a thumbs-up sign. Another miracle had occurred.

  That summer was Max’s first year at the paper, and he didn’t want to spend much time away from it, no matter how often I reminded him that he needed a vacation. This was complicated by the fact that Max had an irrational, deep-rooted, powerful fear of flying. He’d been on planes only twice in his life, and each time was such an excruciating experience that he vowed he’d never fly again. Because of this, he had to take the two-and-a-half-hour ferry trip to the island instead of the fifteen-minute flight on the little commuter planes. That, added to the two-hour drive from Sussex, meant over four hours of traveling each way. I couldn’t blame him for not coming every weekend.

  So I invited Kate and Matthew to spend a couple of weeks with Margaret and me on Nantucket, in Aunt Grace’s house. She jumped at the chance. Our husbands would try to come down for a week at the end of the month.

  On a steamy Monday in August, Kate and I drove down together in my Volvo station wagon. It was just a little over a two-hour ride, but Matthew and Margaret were keyed up, impatient, and whiny. It seemed we stopped every fifteen minutes to use the bathroom. During the ferry ride they were still wired, wanting to race each other around the open decks and up and down the stairs, wanting to pet every dog they saw, wanting to do everything but sit still.

  “What were we thinking?” Kate said to me. We decided to divide up, taking the children to opposite ends of the boat.

  Once we got to the island, we still had chores to discharge before we could relax. Kate went off to the grocery store while I made the beds and opened up the house. The children weren’t hungry; they’d filled up on pizza, hot dogs, and pretzels on the ride over. We had a makeshift dinner of cheese and crackers with our blissfully cool vodka tonics while the children played like demented aliens in the backyard, and the alcohol must have warped our thinking because at bedtime, when Margaret and Matthew pleaded to sleep in the same room, we agreed. An hour later, we separated our exhausted and overstimulated children, settled their fretful little bodies in their own bedrooms, staying with them, singing lullabies, until they fell asleep.

  It was almost eleven o’clock when we finally collapsed downstairs on Aunt Grace’s deep chintz-covered sofa.

  “It can’t be like this all summer,” Kate sighed.

  “The first day is always hard.”

  “I’ve always dreamed of spending a summer on Nantucket. I never imagined it like this.”

  “You weren’t imagining it with a three-year-old.”

  “I wonder if I’ll ever feel young and wild and free again.”

  “I don’t believe that’s in the job description of motherhood.”

  “Well, I can’t stand it. I’m not kidding, Lucy! I can’t stand it!”

  I thought a moment, then said, “I think I have an idea.”

  Kate and I schlepped our cooler, beach umbrella, beach bags, and two children away from Jetties Beach, over the sand and the narrow boardwalk toward the parking lot. We’d spent almost six hours by the water and everyone was stoned from too much sun. We’d tried to give the children a rest by insisting they lie on the blanket for a while, but they hadn’t slept. They’d amused each other by making fart noises with their mouths. Now they were cranky. We adults weren’t exactly vivacious.

  I drove; Kate supervised the kids from the front seat. Matthew didn’t want to wear his seat belt; it pressed on his sunburn.

  “Keep it buckled,” Kate insisted.

  “Noooo,” Matthew whined, twisting and kicking the back of my seat.

  “I’ve got sand in my bum crack!” Margaret wailed.

  “Bum crack!” Matthew echoed, then laughed maniacally.

  Back at the house, we dumped everything in the front hall t
hen rushed off to our separate bathrooms. Margaret and I stepped into the shower, pulling the glass door shut, enclosing us in a blissfully slick white world, a technological man-made miracle, less dazzling, more snug than the seaside. As the cool water sluiced down over us, we peeled off our sticky swimsuits, exposing skin as shockingly white and ultranaked as worms under rocks. Specks of sand trickled down around our feet. We’d both been wearing bikinis, and now we were as striped as zebras.

  “Mommy has bo-bo hair!” Margaret sang out, pointing at my crotch.

  “And Margaret will have hair there, too, when she’s a big girl,” I told her. “Now close your eyes. I’m going to wash your hair.”

  “My head hair.”

  “Your head hair.”

  The creamy muffins of Margaret’s bottom broke into goose bumps when I began to massage the shampoo into her scalp. I adjusted the water temperature. Steam rose around us. The baby shampoo foamed in my hands like the froth that had laced the shore.

  “Now you wash Betsy,” I told my daughter, and she did, as I shampooed my own hair.

  When our tanned skin was squeaky, free of the grit of sand, I turned off the water, pulled on a toweling robe, and wrapped my little girl in a towel.

  “Oh, don’t we feel all healthy and clean!” I hugged her. She smelled fresh, as if all her pores exuded sunlight. I combed her hair. Her scalp was paler than her forehead. I dressed her in shorts and shirt, and she lay on my bed, dressing her doll while I pulled on shorts and a jersey.

  Kate was already in the kitchen, chopping vegetables. In the three days we’d been here, we’d been virtuous, eating enormous fresh salads and giving the children tortellini and thin slices of chicken.

  “What can I do?” I asked. I liked it that Kate felt so at home in my Nantucket house. It was one of the things that drew me to her, how easily she could take charge—or let me have it.

  “Milk for M&M,” she said. “Their macaroni and cheese is heating.”

  An outraged squeal came from the living room. Our children got along as well together as we did, but even the best child gets tired, and we had tried our best to tire these two today.

  “All right, you go first,” Matthew snapped.

  They were playing an ersatz version of Candyland. We let them play until we heard the petulance edging their voices. Then we herded them into the kitchen and fed them. We took them to their separate bedrooms and read them stories and kissed them and tucked them into the soft clouds of their beds. We turned on the night-lights, turned off the overhead lights, and went out into the hall, leaving the doors open slightly.

  Then I changed clothes and went off to get the babysitter.

  This was to be our antidote to too much adult responsibility: an evening touring the local bars.

  We showed Sadie, the babysitter, where the children were, and the food, and the emergency phone numbers. We promised we’d be home by midnight. We hurried out to the car.

  I drove.

  Kate said, “I’ll bet this will be the only Volvo station wagon in the parking lot.”

  “I’m sure.” Already I felt more relaxed. It was just after nine and the air was soft and dark and inviting, like the pelt of a purring cat.

  We went to the Muse, a bar outside of town on the Surfside Road. They had live music on weekend nights and tonight there was a local group performing.

  We parked between a classic red Impala convertible and a Jeep Wrangler. We stood in line to pay the cover charge, squeezed between a clutch of already drunk college boys and two couples with mousse-backcombed hair (men as well as women), and gold chains around their necks and wrists (men as well as women).

  “I don’t know about this,” Kate whispered.

  But when we stepped inside, our spirits rose. The good hard beat of rock music pounded through the room. The dance floor was jammed and so was the bar. The faces of hundreds of males of all sizes and ages stirred in the shadows.

  Kate, taller than I and more aggressive, cut a path through the crowd to the bar. I followed.

  “Two margaritas, ice, salt,” she yelled at the bartender.

  The air of the room was redolent with a complicated and entirely grown-up funk of tanned skin, alcohol, aftershave, and cigarettes. I sipped my drink; it tasted sweet and smoky. Kate squeezed and slid through the crowd to the edge of the dance floor. The drumbeat was like a primitive pulse, irresistible.

  We watched the band: five guys in jeans and torn T-shirts. The lead singer’s dark hair hung in wet hanks around his face. His chin and cheekbones were so sharp they could have cut paper.

  “Love this!” Kate shouted at me, her words torn away in a thunder of music.

  “Me, too!” I was downing my drink awfully fast, trying to hit my inhibitions with a knockout punch of alcohol.

  Everyone on the dance floor looked young to me, and cool and glamorous and carefree. I was twenty-seven, and I felt ancient. The dancers looked buoyant; I was a wife and mother, weighted down for life.

  Then a male body blocked my view of the dancers. A big guy, under thirty, with a lobster-red face and sun-bleached hair and brows leaned close to me. He yelled something at me. My first reaction, pathetically enough, was confusion. It took me a moment to understand that this stranger wanted me to dance with him. For a moment I teetered on the edge of rectitude, sobriety, propriety. Then Kate hit me between my shoulder blades and knocked me into the present.

  “Get out there!” she yelled. “Give me your glass!”

  I slugged back the last of my margarita, handed Kate the glass, and followed Lobster Guy onto the dance floor. For a few moments I only swayed and shuffled timidly, but my partner was one of those men who, although blocky and chunky and solid, seemed to connect, battery-like, right up to the music. He beat his hands as if he had invisible drums in front of him and shook his head and muttered and shouted out “All right!” He was demented. What did I care what he thought of me? I dropped my defenses and let the music flood in, churning my blood.

  I looked over at Kate and grinned. And realized with a jolt of totally immature satisfaction that someone had asked me to dance first.

  Not long after that I saw Kate being led to the center of the mob by a tall and really cute guy. I waved and grinned at her, then dove back into the electric frenzy of music.

  Lobster Guy was inexhaustible. I danced for hours, until my hair and shirt and underwear were soaking wet and clingy. Sweat slid down my neck and into my bra as softly as kisses. How long had it been since I’d danced like this, been free like this, at once totally myself and also part of the music? No little hands tugged at me. No proper matrons were watching me. No one here needed me, and it was like being young again, when I could dance all through the dark night and step out into a morning as crystal-dewed and new as Eden.

  Now at twenty-seven I was responsible for that world. Sometimes it felt like I was responsible for the very turning of the earth. Most of all I was responsible for the health and safety and happiness of my daughter, and that was overwhelming. Here it was all heat and beat and freedom.

  It was twenty after twelve when I looked at my watch. Across from me Kate tilted her pelvis toward her partner in what looked like a Zulu mating ritual. Her hair had come totally loose from its clasp and hung in wet limp strands around her flushed face.

  “We have to go home,” I yelled at her. “Babysitter.”

  “No!” she shouted.

  “Yes!” I took her hand and dragged her off the dance floor.

  “Not fair, not fair!” she yelled at me, stumbling against me.

  The fresh air outside hit us like a slap in the face.

  “Oh, God,” Kate groaned. “I feel like Cinderella.”

  “You’re going to feel like Frankenstein’s monster in the morning.”

  We fell into the Volvo. I drove home at a virtuous twenty miles an hour. With great earnest sobriety I paid the babysitter and drove her home. When I got back to the house, I found Kate passed out on the sofa. I smiled, covered her wi
th a light blanket, and let her sleep.

  July 1998

  “You look cool, Mom,” Margaret says. She’s lying on our bed, watching me dress for a posh summer cocktail party.

  “Thanks, kid.” I’m wearing tight black slacks, black high heels, a sleeveless turquoise linen shirt.

  “And I like your hair like that.”

  Now I’m suspicious. My hair looks like it always does in the summer, a curly unruly mess. “So you’re all set for tonight?” When Margaret babysits Jeremy, we pay her the going rate; in return she has to pretend he’s not her little brother.

  “Yeah.” She hears a car door slam and looks out the window. “Dad’s home.” She wriggles off the bed, busies herself with smoothing out the light cotton quilt we use for a summer spread. “You know, Mom, Jeremy’s watched The Little Mermaid about a hundred times.”

  “So?” I’m carefully lining my eyes.

  “So it’s kind of not fair. There’s a really good movie on HBO I’m going to miss so Jeremy can watch his dumb old video.”

  “You’re babysitting.”

  “I know. But still … why can’t we have two TVs in the house? Everyone else does.”

  “Listen, kid, sometimes I think one set is too many.”

  “Mom.”

  Max rushes into the room. He looks hot and tired and miserable. “Give me a minute to shower and change.”

  “You’d better shave.”

  “Not enough time.”

  “You look a little rough.”

  Margaret protests, “Mom, he looks great like that. Urban chic.”

  Max slams the door on our discussion, shutting himself in the bathroom. “Hello to you, too, Dad,” Margaret says sulkily to the closed door. Since Stan told Max about Paul Richardson’s involvement in the CDA corporation a few days ago, Max has been gloomy, taciturn with me, uncommunicative with Margaret and Jeremy. I can deal with his bad spells, but I hate it that he’s beginning to let them affect the way he treats his children.