by Nancy Thayer
“I know how you feel,” Gardner said. “That’s how I felt when I made up my mind to tell Madaket. I had to leave my office, I had to ask my nurse to reschedule all my poor patients. I’ve never done anything so irresponsible in my life.”
“You’re both being so wonderful about this. I’m so grateful.”
“The charter plane is at the east end of the airfield,” Madaket informed Joanna. “The pilot’s name is Will Turner. He said he’d be waiting for you at the Nantucket Airlines gate.”
“Great. Thanks.” As they pulled into the parking lot, Joanna leaned over and kissed her baby boy on his cheeks, then turned and planted a fat smooch on Madaket’s head. “Don’t get out. I’ll find him myself. God, I’m so excited I think I could fly there without the plane!” She jumped out of the car the moment it slowed in front of the terminal. “I love you all!” she shouted, and raced off.
Streaking through the entrance and along through the long, well-lit building, Joanna came at last to the counter where Will Turner waited. She introduced herself, and wrote him a check on the spot, and just as they headed out to the gates, Joanna heard her name called. It was Madaket.
“Here,” she cried, rushing up to Joanna and putting a paper bag in her hands. “I got this for you. It’s dinnertime, and you haven’t eaten since lunch, and you won’t have a chance to eat, and the flight takes about an hour—”
“Oh, honey, thanks, but I’m too excited to eat.”
“I know, but once you’re in the plane it will help to have some food. You’ll be edgy and nervous and this will help pass the time.” Madaket looked at the pilot. “There’s stuff in there for you, too. Since you were good enough to come at a moment’s notice—”
“Thanks,” Will Turner said, and headed off for the gate to the airfield, and Joanna hurried after him, turning to blow Madaket a kiss.
“I’ve already checked the plane for takeoff,” Will said as he handed Joanna into the twin-engine Cessna.
The little plane shot down the runway and lifted up into the air. Below them, the outline of the island came into view, then drifted away as they flew toward New York.
“I gather this is a good emergency, rather than a bad one,” Will said.
“It is,” Joanna told him. Then a new thought hit her—what if Jake wasn’t in New York? Or what if he was in New York but with another woman? Why shouldn’t he be? She’d made no promises to him, and she’d asked nothing of him. “Or I think it is,” she muttered to the pilot. “I hope it is. I guess you never know with love, do you?”
“Oh, it’s love,” Will Turner sighed. “Well, you’re right, you never do know.”
Joanna dug into the paper bag and found two Styrofoam cups of coffee. Madaket was right; it did help to pass the time. She fussed with the little containers of sugar and cream and handed a cup to Will, and drank her coffee and toyed with a sandwich and still they weren’t there. The engines of the small plane droned steadily, and she put her head back and closed her eyes and tried to rest. But she couldn’t rest. Beneath them the ocean spread in vast darkness.
“Talk to me,” she said to the pilot. “Talk to me about anything.”
Will cleared his throat. “Well, uh …”
“Tell me about your home. Your family.”
“This is my home,” Will said, patting the instrument panel of his plane. “This is my family.”
“Then tell me how you started flying.”
That was the right question to ask. Will regaled Joanna with tales of his love for flight, which began in childhood and continued right up to the moment. The buzz of his words calmed her for a while, until the lights of New York came into view, and then she was overcome with an irrational urge to shout, “Shut up, shut up, just get us to New York!”
She was relieved when Will curtailed his monologue in order to turn his attention to the routines of landing. Joanna took her compact from her purse and looked in the mirror; not an efficient way to judge her makeup since the lights inside the plane streaked her face with shadows, and as she attempted to refresh her lipstick, the little craft shuddered and bumped. She brushed her hair, which didn’t need it, then brushed it again. Finally she subsided against her seat, eyes closed, as they descended toward the landing lights.
She knew where Jake lived. He had a handsome apartment in the East Eighties. She’d been there often when Emily was alive; they gave wonderful parties. She tried to remember if she’d been there since Emily’s death, and decided she hadn’t. Jake’s children were grown. He would be lonely in all that space.
The plane touched down, bumped, skidded, then settled firmly against the landing strip. She opened her eyes and watched the blue lights flash by the windows of the plane as they slowed, the little plane sputtering just outside the windows. They decelerated to a crawl. In the distance, the lights of jumbo jets in line for takeoff moved in a stately procession. Blasts from other planes in transit hit their little plane so hard it rocked. They seemed to be idling at the edge of the airfield.
“What are we waiting for?” Joanna asked.
“There’s a lot of traffic here tonight. We’ve got to wait our turn to approach the terminal.”
Joanna closed her eyes again, and crossed her arms over her chest and forced herself to take deep breaths to calm down. She could call Jake. His home number was unlisted, but she knew it. But the shuttles that made the New York/Nantucket run, and this small plane as well, were situated in a small building apart from the regular terminals and she wasn’t certain where the pay phones were. It would be quicker simply to run out, hail a cab, and jump in. Besides, she didn’t want to call Jake, she wanted to surprise him.
It was a torturous eternity before the plane slowly crept its way across the dark pavement and into the civilization of lights and ground crew and buildings. Will let down the door, stepped out, and handed Joanna down. Reaching for her bag stowed at the back of the plane, he gave it to her and told her good luck.
“Thanks,” she said. “Thanks for everything.”
Then she raced off. Through the small, rather shabby terminal, which was mostly shut down for the night. Out the front doors, to the street. Which was dark and empty. No taxis awaited.
She looked left and right. Left led only to a barren dark expanse of airfield and looming plane hangars. To her right, far away, the enormous complex of La Guardia sprang up, with ramps and cement walls and dark holes in the stretch of land she’d have to cross to reach the outer limits of the multilevel terminal.
She raced back into the small building behind her and rushed through it, searching frantically for the pay phones. She found them. She’d call a cab. But the hard plastic covers for the telephone directories hung emptily from their chains. She dropped coins into the machine, punched in the numbers for information, and waited. Finally someone answered, gave her a number for a taxi service, and clicked off. Frantically she dialed, and begged for a taxi to be sent to her, then hurried back outside where, to her amazement and joy, a taxi appeared almost instantly.
She threw herself into the backseat and barked the address at the driver.
As they pulled away from the airport and entered the stream of cars headed for the city, Joanna once again took out her compact and checked her face. Her face, that face, which now, according to the kind of light cast by the lamps they passed, showed her in either an orange or a blue glow, that face was pretty much set. Lipstick would help, and eyeliner, but on either side of her mouth a pair of parentheses was indelibly indented, and the appealing slant of her eyebrows was changing, sinking into a downward slant. She looked tired. Well, she should, she’d had quite a year. And Jake knew what she looked like and had asked her to marry him anyway.
The cab began to lurch; a sure sign they’d entered the checkerboard grid of city stoplights and double-parked cars and one-way streets and general traffic congestion. They were almost there. She glanced at her watch: it was a little after nine o’clock. Wednesday night. Jake would be home. Should be. She was fa
miliar with his routines. He would have left the network and taken a cab to one of his clubs, where he would have eaten a large meal and had a Scotch or two with it, while perusing piles of memos, files, and reports from the briefcase he carried with him everywhere. He’d take another cab to his apartment after dinner and settle in to watch television. CVN had a block of comedy shows they ran on Wednesday nights from eight until eleven, the latter shows aimed at more mature and sophisticated audiences. For relaxation, Jake would be watching those.
But where? She didn’t know. Did he stretch out in bed and watch television? Or sink into one of the leather chairs in his den? Would he have showered, would he be in pajamas? Or a robe? Perhaps, saddened by Joanna’s rejection of his marriage proposal, he would have started dating one of the many bright young things who worked at the network. Perhaps he had one of them in his apartment now, and was plying her with liquor and admiring her flat stomach and pert breasts. Why should Joanna believe that she was the only woman for him? Jake was a man of great appetites. Jake wasn’t one to wait around, nursing his wounds. He was a man of action; he got things done. He was a hot-blooded, warmhearted man, who liked to eat and drink and laugh, and therefore who undoubtedly liked to make love. The more she thought about it, the more certain Joanna became that Jake would have moved on after Joanna’s rejection.
It was quite probable that he had a woman with him now.
What if Joanna knocked on his door, and he opened it and was wearing mussed clothing with lipstick on the collar and a young woman half-undressed on his sofa?
“This is it, miss,” the cabdriver called, startling her from her thoughts. Jake’s apartment building rose up before her.
“All right,” Joanna said meekly. She paid the driver, picked up her bag, and stepped out of the cab.
The doorman politely asked Joanna her name and whom she’d be visiting. For one wild moment Joanna wanted to clutch the man by his lapels and beg him to tell her whether or not Jake Corcoran had a woman with him tonight.
“It’s Joanna Jones. For Jake Corcoran.”
The doorman spoke into the intercom.
Perhaps Jake wasn’t even home.
“Go right on up,” the doorman said, and held open the door.
She crossed the small foyer, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the button. Her heart knocked against her chest. The door slid open. In this building each floor belonged entirely to one owner, and Joanna stepped off onto the fourth floor and into Jake’s entrance hall.
He was waiting there, a perplexed smile on his face.
“Joanna. What a surprise.”
He was wearing suit pants and a rumpled work shirt, with his tie yanked down and his sleeves rolled up. A familiar sight. He’d been running his hands through his hair again, and it stood out in a dark halo around his head.
“Yes, I wanted to surprise you,” Joanna told him. She could tell that he was happy to see her. “Jake. Jake, I want to change my answer to your proposal. If it’s not too late.”
Jake shoved his hands into his pants pockets and eyed her with a lazy smile. “And what did you want to change your answer to?”
“Yes. I want to say yes.”
A smile broke out over his face. “That’s the best news I’ve had in a long, long time, Joanna.”
“Oh, Jake, I’m so—excited and exhausted!” Joanna confessed. And he laughed, and took her by the arm and with the other hand took her bag, and led her into his living room and shut the door to the outside world behind them.
They sat on the sofa and talked. Joanna told him about Madaket and Gardner, and on the strength of that news Jake rose and went into his kitchen, and she followed him and watched while he took a bottle of Perrier-Jouët from his refrigerator.
“I always keep one cold, just in case,” Jake said as he uncorked the bottle and took out two crystal flutes, and Joanna smiled with delight at this new bit of insight into Jake’s life—what a wonderful man he was, what an optimist, always to have a bottle of champagne ready, always certain, even after all life had tossed him, that on any normal day life might give him something to celebrate.
Returning to the living room, they sipped champagne and talked, or rather Jake listened to Joanna with a new light in his eyes, and Joanna told him all about Madaket and Gardner and Christopher and Fabulous Homes until at last she realized that she was talking faster and faster, almost babbling. She was nervous, in spite of the effects of the champagne, about the next step of intimacy with Jake. About going to bed with him. Odd thoughts flashed through her head: she’d gotten so stretch-marked from her pregnancy, what if Jake found her body unattractive? Or what if her body didn’t work, somehow, for him or for her?
Then suddenly Jake’s arms were around her and his mouth was on hers, and he was leading her to the bedroom, and not turning on the lights, but letting in a gentle glow from the hallway, and delicately, slowly, helping her out of her clothes and onto his bed. It was covered with soft goose-down comforters which surrendered, seeming to melt to the shape of Joanna’s body. Jake took off his clothes and lay next to her. His skin was warm, his thighs shockingly large and muscular, his chest matted with hair, his torso fleshy to the touch. She had only held her little baby over the past many months, and now Jake seemed like a giant to her.
“Are you all right? Is this all right? Am I going too fast?” he asked.
“Yes, no, oh, Jake,” Joanna answered, greedily pulling him to her.
Jake kissed her and ran his hands over her body, learning its lines and swells and hollows. He rose up above her. She parted her legs. He entered her. He was wide, big. He could wedge himself into her only so far before she shifted her hips to stop him.
He asked, “Am I hurting you?”
“Yes,” she admitted. He withdrew slowly, and as he did, she felt her muscles and skin contract, as if trying to keep him. “No,” she said. He entered again, a little way. The pressure was intense and painful and delicious. “Just there,” she said, and Jake stayed, just there.
He was supporting himself on his arms above her, and his face was next to hers, his mouth against her ear. She had brought her knees up so that she could find some purchase on the comforters with her feet to help her bear the brunt of his wide penis. He smelled so good, so Jake-like and familiar and safe, an aroma of coffee and Scotch and ink, and yet he felt so unfamiliar, so excitingly strange.
“This is going to take us a while,” he whispered, moving a millimeter farther into her.
“Yes,” she agreed in a sigh.
“We’ll have to work on this a lot,” he told her.
“I know.”
“I love you, Joanna,” Jake said.
“Oh, Jake. Oh, Jake, I love you,” she replied.
They lay in silence then, adjusting themselves by degrees to the contours and desires and limitations of their bodies together. Finally Jake said, “Joanna, I can’t—” and he pulled back, but as he did she felt him swell even more, so that he was like a boulder wedging against her. She felt the ripples of his pleasure radiate into her body. She shuddered with a delicious pain, and when he lay next to her, exhausted, catching his breath, subsiding, holding her to him, his chest heaving against her, she lay like a woman who has just emerged from a dream and awakened to the fullness of life.
Part Three
Twenty-nine
The courts of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts were housed in Nantucket’s town hall, a modest two-story brick building on Broad Street. Its main, front door faced oddly away from town so that most people, approaching it from the center of the village, used the side doors to enter. Inside, a gloomy long corridor punctuated by doors to the Assessor’s Office, the Town Clerk’s Office, the Registry of Deeds, and other town boards and commissions stretched straight between side entrances with staircases to the second floor. There the upper hall repeated exactly the long straight run, institutionally bland, with offices on each side opening to the Registry of Motor Vehicles, the Courtrooms, and the Judge’s Chamber.<
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On a bright early June afternoon a group filed into the courthouse and up the stairs to the second floor: Joanna, Madaket, Jake, who carried Christopher, Gardner, Pat and Bob, June and Morris, Claude and his new beau, Larry, Gardner’s sister Norie, and Marge and Harry Coffin. The women wore fluid, pastel dresses and romantic hats trimmed with flowers or lace or silk bows. The men wore sports coats and ties and Christopher wore a pale blue sweater over his white cotton romper.
No benches or chairs lined the long hallway for the waiting crowd, but an officer of the court, smiling above his dark suit, assured them they wouldn’t have to wait long. He lingered to chat about the fine June weather. Everyone talked at once, and then the door opened and they were summoned into the courtroom.
Judge Julius Cohen, who came several times a week from Boston, sat in black robes behind his high bench. He peered down at them through thick black-framed bifocals.
“Will the parties concerned please approach the bench?” he directed.
Joanna and Madaket went forward. The witnesses solemnly clustered in a half-circle.
The judge stared down at the two women in stern silence. A hush fell over the room. Even Christopher, who’d been squirming in Jake’s arms, trying to get a look at this new room, went quiet, eyes wide as he looked around.
Judge Cohen studied the forms before him.
“Joanna Jones?”
“Yes.” Joanna smiled.
“Madaket Brown?”
“Yes, sir.” Madaket smiled, too.
The judge looked them over, taking his time, then spoke. “You, Joanna Jones, have petitioned this court to adopt Madaket Brown as your legal daughter.”
“That’s right, Your Honor.”
“And you, Miss Brown, are twenty years old and understand that we are therefore waiving the social services procedures.”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“You want to be adopted by this woman.”
“I do.”
