Between Husbands and Friends

by Thayer, Nancy

  Humidity lay like a white veil over the island, but out on the sound the sky rose above us in a dazzlingly clear halcyon blue. A lazy breeze sent us tacking over tranquil waters. The boat sheared along, tossing up bubbles, like iridescent confetti, as we went. I leaned back to feel the sun on my face while Chip navigated the shoals and shallow waters between the islands and veered toward the northern side of Tuckernuck. We didn’t talk. Chip was intent on the sail. I relaxed into the warm day.

  Tuckernuck was a small, wild island with no electricity, one telephone, and only a scattering of houses belonging to the few peculiar families who took refuge here when their need for solitude and serenity won over their need for civilization. Near a grove of trees we spotted a cluster of bright color, people walking on the island, and a few sails winked on the horizon, but chiefly we saw sand, sea, sky. Most people liked to picnic on the long bar of sand called Whale Island, but Chip sailed us to the north and around to the west, into the perfect shelter of Outer North Pond. No one else was here, on land or water.

  He maneuvered the boat just to the edge of a shelf of sand, dropped the sail, secured the lines of the boat, and jumped into the shallow water.

  I handed him the picnic hamper and towels, then climbed out and waded to shore. The water was as warm as it would ever get, but it was still a shock as it lapped around my skin. It took my breath away.

  The sand crunched as we walked to the center of the cove and spread out our towels. On the left, beach plum and wild rosebushes, tangled with vines and speared through with beach grass, provided a low wall to screen us from the water. On the right, a sandy cliff rose perhaps fifteen feet, twisted cedar trees clawing for purchase in the treacherous soil. The sand was warm, the light thick and honey-colored. The wind rustled the natural barrier of bushes but did not so much as flutter the tips of the towels we spread on the sand and anchored with the picnic basket and cooler. I unzipped my fluorescent yellow life vest and dropped it on the turquoise towel, then began to set out lunch.

  Chip settled next to me on a lime green towel, his big feet sticking out into the sand. He was taller than Max, bigger than anyone I’d been around recently. Thick hair on his legs and arms glinted like spun gold in the sunlight and I found myself wondering how much more calcium he would need than anyone else, just to fortify the bones in those long legs. His toes were ridiculously long and crooked and white, like exposed secrets.

  “Turkey and brie?” I asked him. “Or chutney and cheddar.” I sat cross-legged, aware of the little ball of belly rising from my bikini.

  “One of each.”

  “How about a nice cold beer?”

  “Great.”

  I reached into the cooler and brought out a can, beads of ice slithering down its slick sides. My fingers touched Chip’s as I handed it to him, his skin hot, a contrast to the cold can.

  We sat side by side, munching, scanning the distance. A gust of wind tickled the hairs along the back of my neck. The sun lay steadily on our bare shoulders.

  I asked, “Is that a heron? Over on the other side of the pond?”

  He looked. “I think so. Your eyesight’s better than mine.”

  “But you can see well enough to sail.” I wasn’t really worried.

  “Probably,” he teased.

  “How reassuring.”

  “Know anyone who has a house here?”

  “I do. A woman who lives year-round on Nantucket. Cindy Harvey. Her parents have a summer place here. I stayed here a few times when I was a teenager. They had a generator, lots of houses do, but there are no electric streetlights, well, there are no streets. It gets so dark here you wouldn’t believe it.” I reached into the bag. “Cookies? Grapes?”

  “I’ll take some grapes.” He leaned back on his elbows and lifted his face to the sun.

  I twisted a clump of seedless red grapes from the cluster and twisted another clump for myself. Perhaps we’d go for a walk, I thought. I could show him where Cindy’s house was.

  Then, “So how are you doing, Lucy?” Chip asked.

  I blinked. “All right.” I wasn’t sure what he meant. Of the four of us, Chip was the one person who hated introspection and soul-searching. Occasionally he’d enter a debate with Max about politics or some other town issue, but he grew impatient when Kate and I talked about personal matters. Once when the four of us were confined to a car together, riding in to see a play in Boston, Kate and Max and I got into a heated discussion about the nature of God. Suddenly Kate burst into laughter and nodded her head toward Chip, who was gazing out the window in the backseat, his mind clearly elsewhere. “Elvis has left the building,” she’d said, shaking her head at her husband’s inattention.

  Chip said, “I was afraid it might be too hard on you. Living with Kate and Abby. After losing Maxwell.”

  Emotions flooded my body. For a moment I couldn’t speak.

  “And I can bet Max isn’t a whole lot of help,” Chip continued.

  I swallowed. “Why do you say that?”

  “Hey, I’ve known the guy for years now. Losing that little boy hit him hard.”

  “Max has talked to you about this?”

  “Not really. Not much. But I don’t need a neon sign to read him.”

  “It’s a pretty difficult time for us,” I admitted.

  “It’s a fucking bitch,” Chip said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “It is a fucking bitch.” And all at once a cataract of tears swept through me, and I folded my arms over my knees and buried my face and wept helplessly.

  Chip sat next to me in silence. After a while he put his hand on my back and patted me, a few slow solid masculine thumps. His large hand, firm and warm, was the kindest sensation I’d experienced in weeks.

  “Oh, Chip,” I sobbed. “Max says he doesn’t know if he loves me anymore. I’m so sad. I’m so lonely. I don’t know how I’m going to go on.”

  Chip pulled me toward him. I turned and rested my face against his shoulder. There was something in his size, his largeness, that made me feel young again, like a child being comforted by her father, and in those moments I surrendered to every anguish in my body, feeling that somehow this larger man could keep me safe, as if he were really holding my body together, so that it wouldn’t break apart with sorrow. It was an amazing, unexpected, singular feeling, landed on that unfamiliar shore, far from other people, surrounded by sand and sea and sky, naked except for my bikini; I was purely vulnerable, honestly exposed, my elemental self, curled up like a baby, like a shell, in that clear world. My daughter couldn’t hear the desperate sounds wrenched from my throat, my husband did not have to bear witness one more time to the disfigurement of my grief. I could let go.

  “Lucy, it’s okay. It’s okay.” Chip stroked my hair.

  His caress was infinitely soothing. His shoulder was broad, his arm strong. I pulled away and wiped my tears with my fists. I looked up at Chip, this man I had known for years, and saw such mercy in his face that my breath caught in my chest.

  “Chip,” I said.

  And as if it were in all the world the only right thing to do, Chip bent and kissed me. His lips were soft, his breath smelled of beer and mustard. He held me firmly, cradling the back of my head in his hand. I had probably never looked more terrible, with my hair tangled from the salt breeze and my face streaked with tears and my belly just three months away from a full-term pregnancy. His touch on my skin was forgiving, and giving. He moved his hand over me as if molding me, and wherever he touched, it seemed my body sprang to life. His touch was like rain after a drought, making seeds stir deep in the dust of my senses.

  I wrapped my arms around him. Now the palms of my own hands were aroused and eager, and I touched what I’d marveled at for so long; the curves and knobs of Chip’s shoulders and elbows and knees, the adamant length and width of his back, the tender buttons of his nipples, the swelling heat beneath his swimming trunks.

  He untied the knot at the back of my suit, and my breasts fell free into the sunlight; their sk
in was as white as the inside of a shell, the nipples hard and orange-pink, like rose hips. Chip laid me down on my side on the towel, and lay on his side next to me. The sand yielded beneath us as if the earth itself were giving us permission. He brought his mouth to my breast, and gently tugged at my nipple. My breast stung. It was as if a dam stretched beneath my nipples, and Chip tugged again, and the dam broke open, and sensation flooded my body. Overwhelmed, I closed my eyes, nearly swooning into the sand.

  I kept my eyes closed while he untied the sides of my bikini bottom. The sand shifted and sifted as he took off his trunks. I felt first of all the blot of cool shadow as he lifted himself above me, blocking out the sun, and then I felt the hot hard shaft of his penis enter me. I shuddered with relief and pleasure. This was real. This was now. I was a naked woman on a solitary beach indulging in the world’s oldest form of consolation. I hugged Chip against me, loving the feel of a man’s body on me, in me, loving the weight of his chest and the stir of his breath and the moist pressure of his mouth and the deep expanse of his cock inside my body. This moment was as authentically mine as anything in my life. I was grateful with all my being. The pleasure was intense. I didn’t want it to end. It built, wave upon wave, carrying me with it in a tide of sensation deep into a whirlpool of bliss. Tears spurted from my eyes and shook my body. Dimly I felt Chip reach his own climax. He rolled over, next to me, and sighed, and reaching out, he took my hand in his. My cheeks were gritty with sand and tears.

  We lay side by side, naked, holding hands, the sun beating down on us. Eyes closed, I savored the satisfaction of the body after sex.

  “You’re a beautiful woman,” Chip said.

  I smiled. “You’re sweet.”

  “I mean it. Don’t you know I mean it?” He turned to face me. He ran his fingers along the line of my cheek, down my throat, around my breast. “You’re beautiful in many ways.”

  “I only know that right now I feel happy,” I said, yawning. The sun’s warmth on my skin, the gentle lapping of the water on the shore, the cries of the gulls overhead, the sense that now was eternity lulled me. I slept.

  I woke to see Chip walking down to the water. He plunged off in a strong crawl down the length of the inlet. I watched for a while, then rose and went to the water’s edge. Waves lapped at my feet. A much less confident swimmer than Chip, still I walked into the water, gasping as the cold hit my abdomen, then I lay down in the salty sea pond. I swam a few strokes, turned over on my back, and floated. Swam some more. My body felt healthy, strong, supple. I was relaxed, and the salt pond supported me. When I walked up onto the shore, I felt as if I had been somehow renewed, almost baptized, by the sea.

  “We should go back,” I said.

  “Let’s finish this last beer,” Chip suggested.

  We sat on the towels, their edges fluttering at our feet in the growing wind. Chip’s long legs stretched beside mine, the golden hair crusted with sand. A slender strip of dark green seaweed clung to his ankle.

  Chip said, “It was good between us. We could be together, Lucy.”

  I held the beer to my mouth and felt the wetness from Chip’s mouth on the metal rim. I shook my head. “Don’t, Chip.”

  “Haven’t you ever thought about it? About us?”

  “I don’t dare.” I handed him back the can and felt the warmth of his fingers on mine. I scooted on the blanket so that I was away from him, facing him. “I’m married. Kate is my best friend. We all have children.”

  “I like being with you, Lucy. I’ve always been sexually attracted to you, but what I feel for you is more—”

  I stood up abruptly. Sand shifted down from my suit onto my feet, making whispering noises. “We shouldn’t talk like this. Hell, Chip, we should be feeling guilty. Remorseful. You’ve got a brand-new baby. This is all just wrong.”

  “I don’t think so.” Chip leaned back on his arms looking up at me; his long narrow body, all bones and ropy muscles extended before me. The sun hit my body at such an angle that my shadow fell across him in a long stripe, like a brand, as if he were marked by me, as if his body possessed something of mine, something immaterial but real, part of my spirit, part of my soul. I was frightened and thrilled.

  “I want to go back,” I said. “Now. Please.”

  The wind had picked up during the day. We sped back to Nantucket over choppy waters. Chip was challenged by the shifting wind, thoroughly engrossed with tacking and adjusting the sails, which made him happy, and made me nervous. He was such a handsome man. How many affairs had he had? Any woman would want to sleep with him, just to touch his perfect body. He was braver than I, more aggressive, more experimental. He was a wonderful lover, too, and he was kind. That he had actually entertained thoughts of the two of us together was stunning, staggering, amazing; it was complimentary and terrifying. All right, so he was less cowed by turbulence than I was; I was still not a complete coward. If I let myself imagine life with him … well, I wouldn’t do it. I could, but I wouldn’t. I would not. We had children to think about, we had Kate and Max.

  Lying between Whale Island on Tuckernuck and Smith’s Point on Nantucket was a stretch of deceptively innocent water, a rippling aquamarine region that looked like an easy swim in several directions to the soundness of land. In fact the curve and lie of the land and the small opening between the two islands sent a fierce fast current surging along, relentlessly sweeping with it anything that came its way. I had heard that even a strong swimmer could drown here, in these chaotic depths, just yards from shore.

  Chip liked a challenge and was good at anything he set his mind to, and we arrived without mishap at last at the inner harbor, took a boat launch to the shore, and headed up to the Volvo. During the sail back we didn’t talk, but once in the car I felt enclosed in an intimate space, and needed to speak.

  “Chip, about today. I did like it.”

  He threw an abashed grin my way. “I noticed.”

  “But I wish it hadn’t happened.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. I want to act as if it never happened. I’m committed to my family. And God knows you can’t even consider deserting Kate now.”

  He was quiet for a long time. Then he sighed. “You’re right, Lucy. I know you’re right. But I want you to know—”

  Reaching over, I put my fingers on his mouth. “No. I don’t want to know. Nothing more.”

  He took my hand in his and kissed my palm. He said, “All right.”

  We didn’t speak again until we arrived back at Aunt Grace’s house.

  I told myself that what happened on Tuckernuck was a secret, an aberration, something to be taken so lightly it could evaporate into the air, like froth on waves.

  Still, I felt stronger when I walked into the house. I felt rejuvenated, capable, alive. Kate and the M&Ms and Abby were in the living room, the children hypnotized by some idiotic television show, Kate reading her paperback.

  “How was the sail?” she asked carelessly.

  “Great!” I replied over my shoulder as I headed upstairs. I showered and spread a lightly fragrant lotion all over my tanned body, pulled on a sundress and sandals, and went back down to the living room.

  “Come on, Margaret,” I said to my daughter. “Let’s get you dressed in something pretty. I’m taking you into town for a shopping spree.”

  Margaret looked at me with slightly glazed eyes. Her face had a kind of pouchiness to it from sitting still on a humid day. “Mom. I want to stay with the baby.”

  “You’ve been with the baby all day. It’s my turn to enjoy the pleasure of your company.” My tone was sweet, but firm. My daughter knew that tone of voice. “Besides,” I added, “we need to let the Cunninghams alone for a while. They need to spend time together as a family.”

  Margaret blinked. Her lower lip quivered. Had I been too cruel, reminding her that she wasn’t part of the precious inner circle? If so, too bad. She had to come to terms with it sooner or later.

  Still she hesitated. I took her hand
and pulled. Reluctantly, she stood. I led her to her bedroom, changed her dress, put barrettes in her hair, realizing as I tended to my child that she was lovely. I had forgotten how lovely she was.

  “Let’s buy you a pink-and-white-striped dress,” I said, turning Margaret around to brush the back of her curly brown hair. “And a pink-and-white headband for your hair.”

  “And peppermint ice cream!” she cried, laughing.

  We looked at our faces in the mirror: mother and daughter, identical faces, mine older and thinner and red-nosed, hers chubbier and paler, both of us smiling.

  “And peppermint ice cream,” I agreed.

  August 17, 1998

  Max’s chinos, blue-and-white-striped shirt, blue sleeveless cotton sweater vest, red bow tie, lie across our bed, his loafers and socks on the floor near the chair. He’s pulling on a faded pair of madras shorts. His chest is bare, and in spite of our week in the sun, his arms and neck are still darker than his torso, giving him the vulnerable look of a creature turned on its back, soft belly exposed.

  “Max,” I say, my voice coming out strangled, “Jeremy has cystic fibrosis.”

  He frowns. “What the hell?”

  “Max, I’m so scared. I had to pretend that everything’s all right. I haven’t told Jeremy yet. I want you to be with me when we tell him. And they have to do more tests. But they’re sure, and it was so horrible, driving home Jeremy wanted to sing that stupid, stupid camp song.”

  Max puts his hands on my shoulders and moves me to the bed. “Wait a minute, Lucy. Sit down. I don’t understand.”

  “That damn song about the fly!” Tears shoot from my eyes. “You know. ‘There was an old lady who swallowed a fly,’ and she swallows a cat and a dog and a pig and the refrain is always, ‘perhaps she’ll die!’ ” The doctor’s diagnosis shoots through my body like a meteor, and sparks of fear flicker in my stomach. “Why do they teach children such terrible songs?”