Between Husbands and Friends

by Thayer, Nancy

This admission knocked the breath out of me. I’d known the Cunninghams for two years now. Max and I had shared countless meals with Chip and Kate, and many August nights and days we’d all lived together in the Nantucket house like one big family. I knew when Kate was premenstrual; I knew what television shows gave Matthew nightmares; but I knew very little, really, about Chip. About Chip in the first person, as opposed to Chip, husband of Kate, about whom I did know a little. I knew that most men were not like Max, like Max in his normal, real self. Most men did not talk so readily and often and enthusiastically about whatever it was that was on their minds. But Chip was especially reserved, which seemed odd, given his profession. Or perhaps it was because of his profession that he was so reluctant to discuss private matters.

  “A lifesaver?” This implied that his life was in need of saving. That perhaps he didn’t like his work, or something, as well as I’d thought.

  He hesitated, then said, “Sailing is straightforward. Like working on the farm or riding. Pure action. No words. I get sick of words.” Chip stretched out an arm and turned on the radio. “Let’s see what the forecast is. Looks like a real storm is settling in.”

  That was as close as I was going to get to Chip today, I thought lazily. The heater blew warm air onto my goose-bumped skin. Torrents of rain cascaded down, drumming on the roof of the car, spraying the windows. The windshield wipers ticked steadily, soothing pendulums in a turbulent world. I considered asking Chip if he and Kate were having problems, but decided against it. The tension between them was no worse than it had been at times between me and Max. I was Kate’s friend; she would confide in me if she wanted me to know anything.

  But, lifesaver? I was fascinated.

  That next weekend the men did not come down, and Kate and I went to the Muse. I danced until my clothes were transparent with sweat and my hair clung to my skull. At midnight I drove home alone. This time I fell asleep without fretting about Kate, but I did wake up and look at the clock when I heard the front door open and close.

  Five-thirty.

  The sun was up. Its light was dazzling. Birds were yammering away in the yard like maniacs. I pulled my pillow over my head and went back to sleep.

  “I don’t see why you’re so upset,” Kate said.

  Our voices were low and reasonable, because the M&Ms were near. We could have been discussing our fall wardrobe.

  It was raining. Matthew and Margaret had built a fort in the dining room out of chairs turned on their sides with blankets and pillows over them. Kate and I sat in the kitchen over coffee.

  “For one thing, it makes me feel odd,” I said. “It makes me feel I don’t understand you. Don’t know you. For another, I hate keeping secrets from Max.”

  “How can you not understand me? You of all people in the world should understand me. Don’t tell me you never lust after any other men.”

  “Well, of course I do, but I don’t act on—”

  “Don’t tell me that sometimes you don’t regret marrying so young.”

  “You know I feel that way sometimes.”

  “Don’t tell me you don’t get sick of being so damned good.”

  Margaret and Matthew came into the kitchen. My daughter still wore her pink nightgown and her brown hair curled wildly up and outward like the tendrils of some sun-starved plant. Matthew wore his Red Sox jersey and his Star Wars pajama bottoms.

  “Mom, can we take the pillows off your bed?” They chorused their question simultaneously.

  “Sure,” Kate and I replied.

  “Yay!” The children raced off for the stairs.

  I said, “I do get sick of being good, Kate. But that doesn’t mean I really want to be bad.”

  “And you think that sleeping with someone other than my husband makes me bad.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied it.”

  “I don’t know what I think, Kate, except that it makes me uncomfortable and worried.”

  “Maybe because you want to sleep with another man, too. Maybe because the corollary is knowing that Max would like to sleep with another woman.”

  “Kate, we’d all like to sleep with other people. The point is that we don’t. Once we’re married, we don’t. Just like, once we’re adults, we don’t live on a diet of chocolate, vodka, and corn chips.”

  Kate smirked. “That reminds me.” She rose, went to the freezer, and took out a Dove bar.

  “I worked off so many calories last night, I deserve this.”

  “I don’t want to know the details.”

  “I meant dancing.”

  “Oh.” After a moment, I got a Dove bar, too. I sat down across from Kate. The M&Ms were dragging pillows into the dining room and into their fort. I watched for a moment, remembering the completely consuming joy of being five years old and constructing a fantasy world. The satisfaction of a shadowy cave with imaginary lions outside and a pillow smelling of my own scent next to me. A carpet as a jungle floor, a crystal pool, a pit of vipers. Being thrilled with fear, and at the same time profoundly safe.

  I had lost all that, the bliss of a pretend world. I had grown up.

  “Kate,” I said. “I lied. I do want to know the details.”

  She told me, while we licked the melting chocolate and the sugary ice cream.

  August 17, 1998

  It’s our third day on Nantucket, and when I awake to the summons of the alarm clock, I lie for a moment watching the breeze billow the white cotton curtains, filling the room with the fragrance of salt and roses. I stretch, feeling happy and relaxed in every vertebra and cell.

  One of the many familiar pleasures of our August vacations is the unscheduled pace of our waking. Unlike the nearly synchronized routine of our work and school day mornings, when we all have to be dressed, fed, and out of the house by a certain precise moment, our Nantucket mornings belong to each of us. We can rise early and jog down to the ocean or sit with a cup of coffee and a novel on the back porch or stroll into town for a huge breakfast. If the men are here, a delicate languor suffuses the air as Kate and I tiptoe from our bedrooms to let the men sleep late, or lie in bed talking to our husbands in whispers that make the moment richly intimate.

  All the children become sloths, twisted in their sheets, snoring, twitching, or as still as statues. Usually the Littlies, Abby and Jeremy, wake first, with puffy faces and damp hair, to wander into the kitchen or onto the porch, yawning jaw-cracking wide yawns, and crawl into someone’s lap, their bodies warm with heat and sleep. Then Margaret rises, showers, and dresses, bringing into any room she enters the sweet light floral fragrance of her perfume. Finally Matthew stumbles down the hall, Neanderthal man not yet evolved, not capable of evolving until after breakfast. If he devours last night’s pizza, cold, for breakfast in front of the television, we let him, because once he eats, he really wakes up, and usually he’s the first one to announce that it’s time to head for the beach. According to the weather, we unhurriedly plan our day, a day built around sunshine and families and friendship and pleasure.

  But this morning the alarm wakes me, and suddenly I remember why, and my body clenches with fear. My heart starts to race, then steadies.

  Today I have to take Jeremy to Boston for some tests at Children’s Hospital. Wally Calder, our pediatrician, made the appointment for me. “Because of Jeremy’s recurring respiratory problems,” he said. “And because he’s having trouble gaining weight.”

  “What do you think could be wrong?” I asked.

  “Let’s see what the tests show,” he’d answered with maddening vagueness.

  I pretended I wasn’t worried when I told the others that Max and I would be taking Jeremy up to Boston for the day.

  “Probably he’s allergic to something,” Kate said sensibly.

  “Yes, and with my luck it’s common house dust,” I retorted, and we’d both laughed, laughed so the four children watching us could see how unafraid we were.

  Now I moan, “Seven o’clock,” and roll across the bed t
o wrap an arm and leg around my husband. I wear a white T-shirt and bikini briefs, and the blue-and-white-striped sheets are cool and silky against my bare skin. “It’s too early. I don’t want to get up.”

  Max lies next to me, as still as a rock except for the slight rise and fall of his chest. At home he sleeps nude, but here he wears both boxer shorts and pajama bottoms to bed, to keep from traumatizing anyone if he has to get up in the night. There are three big bathrooms in the house; still, with eight people it’s best to be conservative.

  “We have to get up, sweetie,” I remind him, cajolingly.

  He sighs and sits up on the side of the bed. His black curls are rumpled, his jaw blue-black with beard. His shoulders slump. At the moment of waking, he is thinking of work, I can tell.

  I sit next to him. I put my hand on his warm shoulder. “I want Jeremy to be okay.”

  “He’ll be okay,” Max says.

  “Promise.”

  “I promise,” Max says, yawning, pulling on his terry cloth robe.

  I slide into a flame-red kimono, a present from my peripatetic parents after a visit to Hawaii, another of summer’s joys. The satiny fabric against my skin and the luxuriously impractical sweep of its wide sleeves and long skirt against my limbs reminds me that summer mornings can be voluptuous and self-indulgent.

  Max shakes his head like a spaniel coming out of water, and wakes fully. “We should hurry. I’ll make coffee. You get Jeremy ready.”

  Sunshine floods the smallest room, its gold drowning out the night-light’s white-silver glow. Jeremy lies on a twin bed with blue sheets and duvet patterned with sailboats and whimsical fish. He’s breathing easily, deeply, his chest rising and falling regularly. He’s slept through the night without waking, but he seems to need more sleep than other children and I hate to wake him now.

  “Hey, big guy,” I say softly, sitting on his bed and touching the tip of his nose with one finger. “Time to rise and shine.”

  He stirs beneath the sheets, his body so thin and knobby it makes me bite my lip, one pain counteracting another.

  He opens his eyes, looks around, sits up, coughs. I pat his back lightly while we wait for the cough to subside.

  “Are we going on the fast boat today?” he asks.

  “Absolutely!” Both the Steamship Authority and the Hy-Line have added high-speed ferries that make the crossing between Nantucket and Hyannis in just one hour. We’ve never gone on the fast boat before, and this treat makes the trip to the hospital seem part of an adventure. Fun.

  “Hey, buddy,” Max says, coming into the room. He tries to give Jeremy a mug of coffee, sweetened and thickened with milk, just the way I like it.

  “Daddy!” Jeremy scoffs. “I don’t drink coffee!”

  “Oh, right! Then this must be for you!” Max hands it to me, then sits down next to me on the bed and pulls Jeremy onto his lap. “Let’s see, you want tea, right?”

  Jeremy giggles. “I don’t like tea!”

  “Oh, I forgot: You want pineapple juice.”

  “No, Daddy!”

  My coffee sloshes in the mug as Jeremy wriggles in his father’s arms. I rise, lean against the wall, and sip it as I watch them. Jeremy wears a short-sleeved baseball jersey with number 5—his hero, Nomar Garciaparra’s number—printed on it and a pair of cotton socks with vaguely dirty soles.

  “You don’t want pineapple juice, you don’t want tea, you don’t want coffee, what do you want?” Max teases, and Jeremy explodes in a frenzy of giggling, knowing what’s coming.

  “Daddy!”

  Max says, “I know! You want to be tickled,” and sets to work while Jeremy squirms and shrieks with laughter.

  “Sssh,” I say, “you’ll wake the others.” From our bedroom, the phone rings. “I’ll get it,” I say, but I know it’s for Max.

  “Lucy?” It’s Roland Cobb, Max’s associate editor and second in command. “I hate to bother you, but I need to speak to Max. We’ve got some problems with the computers.”

  I hand the phone to Max and set about getting Jeremy up and dressed and ready for the day. We’re in the kitchen eating cereal when Max comes in, the phone still in his hand.

  “Do you think you can manage in Boston without me?” he asks.

  I hesitate. “Sure.” Jeremy is next to me, I don’t want to show any fear, any concern, but damn.

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Max tells Roland. Clicking off the phone, he says, “I think I can take care of things today. I might even beat you back, but don’t count on it.”

  “Are you going on the fast boat with us this morning, Daddy?” Jeremy asks.

  “You bet,” Max says, ruffling his son’s hair. He’s talked with both children about his flying phobia. Sometimes people just have these idiosyncrasies; it’s irritating and irrational, but nothing to be ashamed of. If he had to fly, he’d do it, of course, but as long as he can take alternative methods of transportation, he will.

  Kate enters the kitchen, yawning and disheveled and still looking like a Victoria’s Secret model in her floating peach gown and robe, her blond hair tumbling around her face. “Want me to go with you, Lucy?”

  Yes! I think. But I’m superstitious. The comfort her presence would give, and my selfishness in wanting that comfort, might move a balance on an invisible scale. “No, thanks. We’ll be fine, won’t we, Jeremy-Bearamy?”

  “Sure, Mom,” he says around a mouthful of cereal.

  “Well, then I’ll have dinner waiting,” Kate says. “Not lobster. Chicken.”

  “Or maybe lasagna.” Margaret, clad in shorts and a T-shirt, comes into the kitchen, and with the ease of someone who’s completely adored, she settles next to Jeremy, picks him up, and hugs him against her. “Want lasagna, Germ?”

  Jeremy nods, his mouth too full to speak.

  “Oh, honey,” I tell Margaret. “You don’t want to make lasagna. Not on a day like today. Look at it! It’s a perfect beach day.”

  “There will be a zillion perfect beach days, Mom,” Margaret says.

  “I don’t know what time we’ll be back,” I say, and I hear the shrillness in my voice. Don’t be so nice, I want to warn my child. Don’t make a big deal out of this. This isn’t an emergency. There isn’t any crisis. This is just a simple trip for tests. Everything is okay.

  Then I think: But what if Margaret has made her own bargain with God? What if she promises to miss this golden day and stay inside and cook, what if she offered that in trade for Jeremy’s good health? We’ve always been so close, my daughter and I, until this past year, when she’s turned fourteen and become reticent, even secretive. But she loves her brother and would do anything for him.

  “If you want to make lasagna, Margaret, please do. We’d love to have it, wouldn’t we, Jeremy?” I bend to kiss my daughter’s head. “You’re sweet to offer.” I head to my bedroom to dress for the day.

  As I climb the stairs, I lift the skirts of the flame-red kimono to keep from tripping on them. My head is bent down, and so I feel Chip’s warmth, enter the electric zone of his presence, before I see him.

  He’s coming downstairs, dressed for the day in khaki shorts and a polo shirt faded to an antique blue that matches his eyes. He smells fresh, of soap and aftershave, and I feel hot and sluttish, still in my robe, my teeth unbrushed.

  “Hey,” Chip says.

  I stop one step below Chip. Chip moves down so that we’re side by side on the staircase, which is wide, but suddenly not wide enough.

  “I’m getting ready to take Jeremy into Boston for tests,” I remind him, sounding prim.

  “And Max has to go back to Sussex. Just for the day. Yet another crisis.”

  “Want me to come to Boston with you?”

  Still, after all these years, I can’t read Chip. I can’t discern the motive behind his offer.

  “No, thanks. We’ll be fine.” Lifting my kimono like a heroine from a gothic romance, I flee, barefooted, up the stairs.

  1990–1991

  I’ve of
ten wondered what sorts of trouble Kate and I would have gotten into if we’d let our misbehavior increase with each passing summer, but the summer that the M&Ms were six we broke the cycle. Since Max didn’t fly, we visited my parents only in the winter, during school vacation, when we drove for three days down to Tucson, saw sunshine, cacti, and mountains for three days, then drove for three days back. It wasn’t the most satisfying way to visit, and that summer my parents decided to fly up to stay in Aunt Grace’s house on Nantucket for the month so they could have some extended time with their granddaughter, and with me, and with Max when he could get there. Kate and Chip took Matthew to Europe for a month, and when we all reunited the last weekend in August, we were such an affectionate, prattling, lobster-eating mob that we didn’t have a moment even to think of separate mischief.

  I missed Kate terribly that month, missed being able to pick up the phone to whisper childishly about how my father’s insistence on smoking cigars in the house or my mother’s time-consuming, nearly anal perfectionism with each one of our meals was driving me into a state of scarcely controlled lunacy. But I had to wait until my parents flew back to Arizona and Margaret was settled in school to really talk with Kate, and then we talked every day, ten times every day, catching up on lost time.

  They say that close friends, or women who spend a lot of time with each other, have their periods on the same days of the month. Some quirk of nature, I suppose, and just the sort of thing that caused Kate and me to discover, the Halloween the M&Ms were six, that we were both pregnant, and both due in May.

  During that winter and the approaching spring, Kate and I were as close as sisters. We were in that stage when our girth and weight made us feel regal, and the movement of the new life within us made us feel honored. Our husbands, mere men, seemed amusing, nature’s joke, so much booming hairy physical matter needed to produce and protect tiny drops of sperm, while we carried an entire child with us.

  Kate wanted a girl; I wanted a boy. We dreamed together: when we gathered together on Nantucket the next summer, our babies would be three months old and probably sleeping through the night. Margaret and Matthew would be seven, the perfect age. They could entertain themselves, yet they would still hold our hands. Chip and Max could go off sailing all they wanted. In our indulgently arrogant states, we considered anything but taking care of babies and children pitiful tasks. We were boats ourselves, grandly swaying around behind the bulging prow of our pregnancies.