Between Husbands and Friends

by Thayer, Nancy

  “Magpie!” He squatted and lifted her up into his arms.

  She wrapped her slim arms around her father’s neck, and settled her bum firmly on his forearm. “Daddy, Mommy took me to eat at the Jared Coffin House! And she bought me a pink Little Pony! And Abby had diarrhea all over everything! When are you coming to Nantucket?”

  Max laughed, and the way he looked at his daughter sent a wash of balm through my body: He loved her. He did love her. “You want me to come to Nantucket to see Abby’s diarrhea?” he asked, kidding.

  “No, Daddy.” Margaret giggled, flirting with her father.

  The young blond woman was ill at ease. She stood at awkward attention, crossing her arms over her chest, then letting them hang at her sides, as if not quite sure what to do.

  I waited just inside the door.

  “Hey, Vivienne,” Max said. “This is my daughter, Margaret.”

  “Hello, Margaret,” Vivienne said, smiling. “Pretty dress.”

  “And I’m Lucy,” I said, stepping forward. “Max’s wife.”

  “Hello, Lucy.” Her smile was strained.

  “Vivienne’s our newest hotshot reporter,” Max told me. “Just graduated from NYU.”

  I was wearing shorts and sneakers—loose, comfortable clothing for driving and carrying groceries in the heat. Vivienne wore a tight blue top, skintight black slacks, and clunky high-heeled black shoes. Her waist looked about as wide as my wrist. Her breasts rode high and firm, pointing out from her chest like ice cream cones.

  “I hope you don’t find it too boring in our little suburban town,” I said to Vivienne.

  “I’m sure I won’t,” she replied, still smiling.

  Margaret took her father’s face in her hands and turned it toward hers. “I missed you, Daddy,” she said. “Mommy can’t play the snorkel game as good as you and she won’t carry me on the beach when I get tired like you do. It’s not fun without you.” Tears glimmered on the edge of her lashes as she patted his jaw. “I haven’t had a sandpaper kiss forever!”

  “Well, you’ll get one tonight,” Max promised. He lifted his daughter up onto his shoulders. Margaret squealed and clutched at his hair.

  “I brought some Bartlett’s tomatoes,” I said.

  “And blueberries!” Margaret added.

  Vivienne said, “I guess I’d better go. Nice meeting you, Margaret, Lucy. See you tomorrow, Max.”

  “Matthew and I did a one-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle!” Margaret yammered as we headed outside. “Can I ride in the van with you, Daddy?”

  With the exception of the color of her hair, Margaret looked exactly like her father, and when she grew older, it was possible that her hair would grow darker; then she would look exactly like him. I had always known that Margaret loved me, but she worshipped her father. She understood me, because I was female, but she adored her precious father, and from about age three she had developed exceedingly feminine wiles to keep him captivated with her.

  Perhaps it was that simple, total, innocent adoration that Max needed. Or perhaps he needed to be drawn down sharply into the immediate world, the child’s world, when now is what counts and the mind doesn’t race ahead to worry about tomorrow. Max and Margaret were nearly inseparable that evening, joking, talking, eating, helping with the dishes. She sat on his lap as they watched television. When she got drowsy, Max carried her up to bed, helped her brush her teeth and put on a nightgown, read her a story, kissed her good night.

  I turned off all the lights downstairs. Upstairs, I slid a silk nightgown on over my head, and went into the smallest bedroom, the one next to Margaret’s.

  The nursery. We had wallpapered it in green and yellow and set up the crib. I had washed soft cotton sheets and put them on the mattress. I had folded soft yellow blankets at the end of the mattress. We had hung the mobile Margaret had gazed at above the crib. I had washed and put away in waiting the tiny white undershirts and booties and terry cloth sleepers.

  Flush with the success of the newspaper and our lives, Max and I had gone on a shopping spree for the new baby. On the white bureau next to the crib was a beautiful light, shaped like a carousel. I didn’t turn the light on but sat in the dark room where moonlight fell through the window in a gentle luminous glow, the leaves of the wild cherry tree shadowed in black tracery on the carpet and wall.

  I sat in the rocking chair. In this chair I had nursed Margaret. I had sat here for hours on end comforting her, holding her, nursing her, singing her lullabies.

  I heard Max leave Margaret’s room. I heard the muffled thud of his feet as he went down the stairs. Was he looking for me? Or was he going to his study, to hide from me.

  What is a marriage? What holds a marriage together? For some people, I know, it is the passion, the connection between man and woman that is of ultimate importance, and children are loved and nurtured, but secondary to the alliance between man and wife. Sometimes the marriage and even the family are about the man’s career, advancing it in politics or academics or the corporate world, amassing wealth and prestige. In other cases, the entire marriage is about the children, having them, devoting time and energy to raising and supporting them.

  What was our marriage about?

  Max and I had been married so young. Just one moment out of college. We had thought we would change the world, at least a piece of it, a small town’s worth, and we were doing that. We’d talked about that much, about Max’s desire to run a newspaper, to be part of the life of a small town. We’d just assumed we’d have children.

  Not until this week had Max told me how enormously and desperately he wanted a son, and I was still trying to absorb that information. It was shocking, the thought that my husband had kept such a significant secret from me for all these years. What other secrets had he kept? Was he keeping? In marriage, is a secret a lie?

  I leaned my head back against the firm wooden support of the rocking chair and closed my eyes, trying to remember. It seemed to me that Max had been genuinely and completely thrilled with Margaret when she was born. With a daughter. I could envision his face, the radiance and awe that lighted his tear-streaked cheeks.

  “My little girl,” he had said, as the nurse put the naked newborn in his arms. “Hello, Beauty.”

  What was he thinking now? Was he contemplating leaving me for the slender Vivienne? Putting a baby into her brand-new capable body? Having a son with her? Had he thought so far ahead that he envisioned our divorce, and joint custody, and Margaret running to him on weekends the way she had run to him tonight?

  His own parents were divorced. It had been hard for him. I was certain he would think long and hard before he inflicted that on his daughter.

  “Lucy?” Max stood in the doorway.

  I hadn’t heard him come up the stairs.

  “What are you doing in here?” he asked quietly.

  We hadn’t set foot in this room for weeks, months. It had been a room for the past, for death, for grief.

  “This is a pretty room,” I said. “I’d forgotten that the branches of the tree brush the window.”

  Max stood just at the door, not inside the room.

  I rose. “Come in,” I said. “Sit in this chair. It’s so comfortable.”

  Max hesitated, then entered. He sat in the chair. Rested his arms along the arms of the chair. “It is comfortable.” He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes.

  I leaned against the crib. The house was quiet except for the familiar, tranquil hum of the central air in the basement. No wind stirred the leaves of the tree outside. The room was dark. We were ghosts to each other, strangers, our skin and clothing black and white.

  I lifted my nightgown up over my head and let it fall on the floor at my feet. Max opened his eyes; I saw the liquid gleam.

  He looked at me for a while, then started to get up, but I crossed the little room and bent over him and pushed him back down in the chair. I unzipped his shorts and brought out his penis, which, to my infinite relief and delight, was love
ly and hard. I don’t care, I thought, if this hardness is caused by lust for Vivienne or secret appetites I know nothing about, this is mine now, and I will have it.

  The rocking chair was wide, the bottom covered with a cushion, and I was grateful for that cushion as I maneuvered myself onto my husband, resting my knees on either side of his hips, supporting myself with my hands on the arms of the chair. Max’s hands fastened onto my hips, and he pushed me down onto him, hard. The rocking chair swayed beneath us. Our bodies were silver in the moonlight. I tightened the muscles of my vagina, clenching him inside me, and very slowly I moved up and down. Max groaned. He put his hands on my breasts. I moved more quickly. The rocking chair creaked beneath our weight. Max put his hands on my shoulders, shoving me down as hard as he could, so that his penis speared up inside me, pushing up further than it had ever gone before. I whimpered with pain, and with pleasure. Over Max’s shoulder, through half-closed eyes, I saw a breeze stir the leaves of the wild cherry tree. With a moan, Max climaxed, his fingers digging into my shoulders. The leaves of the wild cherry tree shuddered. I moaned, too.

  Max put his hands on my face and brought my mouth to his, and kissed me like a thirsting man who has found water. I kissed him back, fervently, like a woman who has returned home.

  August 17, 1998

  Max blinks. “Chip? What do you mean?”

  I can’t speak. I am so frightened. I’m afraid I’m going to die of fear. My body is made of ice. I stare at my husband, and tears stream down my face.

  Max frowns, then rocks back, as if I’ve hit him. “What exactly are you saying, Lucy?”

  My hands rise to cover my mouth, as if my body is fighting to hold back these words.

  “Do you remember the summer Margaret was seven?”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  I force my hands down into my lap. They hold on to each other tightly. “The summer Margaret was seven …”

  “Of course I remember it.”

  I’ve got to go through with this. I clear my throat. “Wait, now, Max, please. Help me with this. I want you really to remember it, how it was that summer.”

  “If you mean that I was depressed and morbid and remote and a shit, all right, I remember, and you are saying what? That because of that, you slept with Chip?”

  Digging my fingers into my palms, miserably, I nod.

  Max’s face flushes scarlet. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “You couldn’t. You couldn’t sleep with him and then let me, let us all go on as if nothing happened. Jesus Christ, Lucy, tell me you didn’t do that.”

  I look at my husband.

  “Tell me!” Max leans forward, grabs my shoulders, and gives me one quick hard shake, as if to dislodge the words from my throat. When I still don’t speak, he lets go of me, rises, and paces around the bed. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Let me get this straight. You and Chip had an affair that summer, and for six years after that you’ve been making fools of me and Kate—”

  “It wasn’t an affair. Not really, Max. We only were together—”

  Max stops. Stares at me, dead white. “You’re saying that Jeremy is not my son.”

  “Might not be.”

  “Jeremy is Chip’s son.”

  “I don’t know. But it’s something that can be easily proven.” I begin to babble, trying to rush us past this moment. “If you take the cheek brushing test and carry the CF gene, then you probably are his father. Then we would need to have Margaret tested. But because of … what I did that summer … Chip should be tested, too, in case he also carries the gene. Then Matthew and Abby will need to be tested. They’ll need to know if they carry the cystic fibrosis gene. Then we can have paternity tests done to see who … who Jeremy’s genetic father is. But first we need to find out who carries cystic fibrosis. Because you both could, you and Chip.”

  “And if I don’t carry the CF gene, that’s proof that Jeremy is not my son.”

  Oh, God, this hurts. “Not genetically.”

  “Not genetically?” Max strikes his forehead. “Are you crazy? Is there any other way?”

  “Yes. Yes. Max, come on.” I rise, stretch my hand out to him, although he backs away. “Jeremy is your son, no matter whose genes are in his blood.”

  “Does Chip know Jeremy’s his child?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Of course not?”

  “We’ve never even discussed the possibility. Max, Chip and I were together—”

  “Fucked each other—” Max’s teeth are clenched. “Or would you prefer to say making love?”

  “Only two times. It was just … loneliness. Consolation. It was nothing.”

  “Right. I believe you. It was so nothing the first time that you did it again.”

  “I want to explain—”

  “All right.” Tears well in Max’s eyes and when he speaks, his voice is choked and strained. “Explain.”

  I’m crying too hard to speak.

  Max stands over me. “I can’t get this through my head. You slept with me and Chip within the same week? Within the same day?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you discovered you were pregnant, what did you think?”

  “I thought it was your child. I wanted it to be your child. Oh, Max, Jeremy is your child.”

  “And it never occurred to you to tell me that this baby might be Chip’s? That’s impossible. Jesus, does Kate know about this? Does Chip? Am I the only one who’s been in the dark all along, some poor miserable cuckold?”

  “No one else knows.”

  “And you’ve kept this secret from me every day for six years. Every time we’ve slept together for the past six years. Every time we’ve lived with them here on Nantucket.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Max.”

  “Then what was it like?”

  “I don’t know! It wasn’t some precious damned secret held close to my heart. I didn’t even think of it.”

  “I thought we had a pretty good marriage. I thought we were—ha!” Tears shine in his eyes. “I thought we were fucking soul mates. It turns out I don’t even know who you are.”

  “Don’t say that. You know me, Max. You know me.”

  He stares at me bitterly, his lip curled in a horrible distaste. Then he goes to the closet, pulls down a duffel bag, and begins to throw clothing into it.

  “What are you doing?”

  He doesn’t answer. He continues to pack. He drops his duffel bag on the floor, opens his bureau, and tosses boxer shorts into it.

  “Come on, Max, don’t do this. You can’t leave. You promised me you wouldn’t leave. You promised you’d help me through this, remember? Just ten minutes ago!”

  His laptop computer rests on a table nestled in a bay window. He slides it into its case, gathers papers together, and stuffs them into a briefcase.

  As he heads for the door, I grab him by his arm. Now I’m furious.

  “You can’t walk away from Jeremy!”

  His face is stone, implacable.

  “Max, come on. Jeremy is sick. You have to help him.”

  “Get his father to help him,” Max says. “Get Chip.”

  Roughly he shrugs off my hand and pulls open the door. He storms through the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door.

  “Max! Wait!” I run after him, tripping in my haste and catching my sandal on the stairs, stubbing my toe terribly. “Max!”

  Outside the sky has turned indigo blue. Up and down the street the windows of houses glow golden with light. Max stops on the driveway. He reaches into the back of the Volvo to get something—his windbreaker—giving me time to catch up with him.

  He mutters, “I’ll leave the car for you.”

  “Max. Please don’t walk away.”

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Max, where will you go tonight? It’s too late for any planes or ferries. Stay here. Please.”

  Max walks away.

  I
watch his stiff, damnably stubborn back, his proud precious fucking head held high, as he strides off down the road. It is too much.

  “Then damn you!” I say under my breath.

  “Mom.”

  Margaret is standing on the front porch, looking puzzled and scared. Jeremy stands next to her.

  “Where’s Dad going?” he asks.

  “Dad and I had a little fight,” I tell my children as I return to the house.

  “ ’Cause he has to go back to work?” Jeremy asks.

  “Right.” A good lie; it reassures my children. This battle is familiar to them; it doesn’t mean that Max and I are really mad at each other.

  “Don’t you want some lasagna, Mom?” Margaret asks.

  I look at my daughter. Her voice is neutral but her eyes are wary.

  “Of course I want some lasagna!” I hug her against me, but she pulls away. She suspects I’m lying. I will have to force myself to eat because that, in the idiosyncratic vocabulary of our family, will prove that I’m telling the truth about the argument between her father and me, will reassure her that everything is all right.

  In the kitchen, Kate asks, “Where did Max go?”

  “Back to Sussex.”

  “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you later.” I flick my eyes toward my children. Margaret catches my gaze and stares back at me steadily, not giving me an inch.

  While Chip works upstairs, we watch a video together, Kate and I and our children.

  Kate is sandwiched between Abby and Jeremy. Margaret curls at one end of the deep sofa, her feet pressed against my thigh; Matthew sprawls at the other end, his long legs extending into the room. This is normality, our two families nestled together, as content and familiar as animals from the same pack, and it seems suddenly precious to me, an ordinary moment suddenly rimmed with sacredness, like the silver of a frame around a picture. I don’t think we’ll ever be all together like this again.

  “Mom,” Margaret says in a low voice, “you’re chewing your nails. Gross.”

  By the end of the movie the Littlies are yawning. I take my time putting Jeremy to bed. I want to cuddle his slight body against mine and read him all of Caleb’s Friend, but he’s had a long day. Hugging his book to him, he curls up beneath his sheet.