Morning

by Nancy Thayer

  Morning is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2014 Ballantine Books eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  Introduction copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer copyright © 2014 by Nancy Thayer

  Author photograph copyright © Jessica Hills Photography

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover by Charles Scribners’ Sons in 1987

  eBook ISBN 978-0-553-39105-3

  Cover design: Eileen Carey

  Cover image: © Jamie Grill/Getty Images

  This book contains an excerpt from the forthcoming book Nantucket Sisters by Nancy Thayer. This excerpt has been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming edition.

  www.ballantinebooks.com

  v3.1

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  An Introduction from the Author

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Other Books by This Author

  Excerpt from Nantucket Sisters

  An Introduction from the Author

  Morning is a novel about female creativity. Sara, a new wife living on Nantucket, cannot seem to conceive, while her husband’s friends are all having babies easily. I titled this book Morning because of the implied word “mourning,” which is what women do every month when they wish to be pregnant and discover they’re not. But morning is also the beginning of a new day.

  Sara is also a freelance editor for a romance writer, Fanny Anderson. She helps Fanny change her life, and it is in this book that my most quoted sentence occurs: “It’s never too late—in fiction or in life—to revise.”

  I’m delighted that my early novels are being made available to my readers as ebooks. My style has changed slightly, as the world has grown faster, but my subject, family life, remains as mysterious and fascinating to me now as it was in these early books: falling in love, raising children, friendships and betrayals and forgiveness.

  Looking back at all my books, I note one other consistency: most books are set somewhere near water. I’ve always found the blue immensity of water inspirational, and of course the storms and sunny beachside days provide wonderful settings and metaphors for novels.

  I hope you enjoy these early novels and discover some new friends there.

  Nancy Thayer

  Chapter One

  When she awoke, his hand was already under her nightgown, on her breast.

  “Steve,” she said, stretching, rolling her body to face him.

  “Good morning,” he said. “Sara.” He spoke into her neck, her name coming on his breath as if it were a word of praise, or need. He lifted her nightgown higher, so that it bunched up around her hips.

  “Wait,” Sara said, “bathroom.”

  She rose, shivering in the cold house, and hurried off. She hurried back, not pausing even to brush her teeth. They were so married, they were like animals. Every bodily smell was aphrodisiacal. She wore perfume now only to treat herself; for Steve she washed off all scent but her own.

  The bed with its homely flannel sheets was deep and warm and receptive. Once under the covers, she raised her arms to pull her nightgown over her head and off. She tossed it onto the floor. Steve already had his T-shirt off, and she nuzzled against his chest, foraging into his prickly hair, his sweet sweaty smells. Foraging—to search for what one needs—and she found it, and raised herself up over her husband. With his hands he pulled the sheet up around her back and shoulders, holding it there to keep off the chill until she grew hot from her laboring against him and with one quick movement shoved it away. When finally she fell against him, he pulled the covers up again, and stroked her back beneath the warm quilt as she calmed down. Around her forehead her hair and even behind her kneecaps her skin was sticky with sweat.

  Between her legs she was sopping, and she lay against her husband, so intimately, as close to him as his skin, and yet in her own female way as far away from him as the moon, thinking of those fluids now, almost listening to those fluids: his, and hers, from this morning’s love—and what else? What else.

  While Steve showered, she made breakfast for him, eggs and bacon and toast and honey, because he worked as a carpenter and needed the calories. There had been a frost last night, but golden chrysanthemums and a few pale, summer-pink roses still bobbed brightly against the stone wall at the back of their yard. The five maples that towered along the fenceline blazed, but beneath them summer’s pink impatiens broke upward through the russet leaves that layered the ground. All that triumphant, spectacular nature made Sara smile. She thought she had a secret.

  She had turned up the thermostat when she came downstairs and now the furnace came on, filling the kitchen with warmth as the coffeepot filled the air with its tantalizing aroma. She inhaled deeply. God, she was such an aroma-nut she should hunt for truffles like a pig. Or root around for drugs at airports. She laughed out loud at the thought.

  “What’s so funny?” Steve asked, coming into the kitchen, all fresh and clean, his blond hair still damp.

  Her heart kicked like the furnace, with a forceful thump, just to see him. After two years of marriage, the sight of him still moved her to her depths.

  “Oh, nothing. Everything. It’s such a beautiful day,” she said, going to him for a hug.

  “You’re such a beautiful lay,” he said.

  They sat across from each other at the kitchen table. Another ordinary day, Sara thought, smiling to herself—but then again, maybe not. She looked down at her lonely cup of coffee and pitiful grapefruit half, then over at Steve’s abundant plate where salty bacon curled seductively, waving at her. She grabbed up a letter she’d tossed onto the table the day before and began to read it again, just to keep her hands off that bacon.

  “Whmmph?” Steve asked, his mouth full.

  “A letter from Julia,” Sara said. Julia was her best friend, her direct line to Boston, her safety valve and counselor. “Listen to this, I meant to read it to you Saturday when it arrived. She’s such a nut. She’s been digging little tidbits up for me from the BU library. This is from Frazer’s Golden Bough.

  “ ‘In the county of Bekes, in Hungary, barren women are fertilized by being struck with a stick which has first been used to separate pairing dogs.’ ”

  “Charming image,” Steve said, grinning, “but hardly practical.”

  “I don’t know,” Sara said, laughing. “There are lots of dogs on Nantucket.”

  “And I’d have to beat you with a stick which has separated the mating dogs? Sounds a little kinky to me.” Steve paused, then grinned across the table at her. “All right, I’ll do it. I think I could really get into it.”

  “Oh, great,” Sara replied.

  Steve rose and pulled his grubby red vest over his tattered but clean flannel shirt. “I’ve got to go now or I’ll be late.” He leaned over and nuzzled the back of Sara’s neck. “Sorry I can’t stay
here and beat you with my stick.”

  Sara turned in her chair and their lips met. They smiled at each other when he straightened.

  “See you later,” he said. Then, at the door, he paused. “Meet me at the Atlantic Café tonight about five, okay? It’s Mick’s birthday and the group’s going to get together.”

  “Oh, sure,” Sara said, feigning enthusiasm. “Fine. Well—do you want me to pick up a present for Mick? Something funny?”

  “I don’t think so, hon. Mick will be happy if we just sing happy birthday and buy him a few beers.”

  “All right. See you then.” Sara looked back down at Julia’s letter.

  “Of course you’re feeling crazy,” Julia had written. “If you didn’t feel crazy now, I’d think you really were. I mean, in the first place, you gave up all the power and prestige and a carpeted office and your name carved in wood on your door at Walpole and James to follow your true love, just like Annie Oakley in a dinghy, across the ocean to live on an island that has fewer people than a shopping mall parking lot. And Nantucket is Steve’s territory—nobody knows you and everyone knows Steve—some quite a bit better than others, which has got to be a little wearing now and then. Now you say you want an instant baby? I don’t know. I think this calls for one of our all-night alcoholic powwows in front of my fireplace. Perhaps all that sea air has clogged your brain. Though you know I wish you well.”

  Something about her friend’s letter irritated Sara. “That’s not fair!” she said aloud, to Julia, who was at this moment across the ocean in her Back Bay apartment getting poshed up for a day at her art gallery on Newberry Street. “One year is not exactly instant!”

  Sara tossed the letter aside and rose, restless with her thoughts. Children had been in their plans from the start. When she and Steve moved to Nantucket a year ago, they bought a house with an extra bedroom—for the children. Sara had been glad to give up her position at Walpole and James and start freelance editing because she knew that kind of work would be more suited to a life with children. Julia knew all that. She knew Sara’s life every step of the way. “Instant baby” was really not fair.

  It was true, though, that it had never occurred to Sara that there wouldn’t be an instant baby—not after all the years she had spent guarding against one. The first few months, she had been just simply amazed, each time her period started, as if something really bizarre had happened.

  When the sixth month of not using birth control and still not getting pregnant rolled around, Sara had become scientific and efficient. She went to see a gynecologist. He had laughed at her worries—actually laughed. “You’ve only been trying six months,” he said after giving her a pelvic exam. “The average time—the average—it takes a woman to get pregnant is three and a half months. That includes all the young teenagers who get knocked up just thinking about sex. You’re a perfectly healthy young woman, you’re only thirty-four, you’ve got lots of time. Just go home and relax and screw a lot.”

  Sara had been shocked that a doctor would say “screw.” Now, six months later, when she was beginning to worry about herself, she wondered if her reaction to the word “screw” hadn’t been puritanical, indicating some deep inner prudishness that was keeping her from getting pregnant. She’d have to mention that to Julia. Or was she overanalyzing?

  If only Julia were here, where she could talk with her every day. Sara was certain that she and Steve were as close as any man and woman could be, but he couldn’t talk about the juicy female things that she talked about with her women friends in Boston. And he seemed baffled by her increasing fears about her fertility. Well, she was baffled, too. Fate before had always been so kind. Her achievements had not been effortless—she had always worked hard—but she had never before met with this kind of repeated failure.

  Perhaps at the very grown-up and accomplished age of thirty-four there was something basic about procreating that Sara needed to learn. Something along the lines of the old wives’ tales that Julia was beginning to jokingly send. Sara longed for a good woman friend here in Nantucket, someone she could call every day to confide in, without worrying about long-distance phone bills. Steve had plenty of friends here, and they all had wives, except for Mick, who was the eternal bachelor of the group. And she liked the wives—but felt shut out by them. They were part of a network of friends who had known one another for years and years, and when Steve returned to this island, where he had grown up, he slipped right back into place; he had always been one of them. Everyone was pleasant to Sara, but she was kept at arm’s length. The people who chose to live year-round on this island thirty miles away from the mainland were independent and inner directed; they were strong, but hard to get to know.

  And of course, it was Sara’s fault, too. Her work was so solitary, requiring long hours of silence. For days on end she had no need to leave her house—really, she had no need to even get out of her robe. She would curl up on the sofa or sit at the dining room table and edit gothic romances until, when she raised her head, she saw that the sun had sunk and the day had gone. And she was shy. She did not know how to force her way into the intimate center of the group. They seemed so complete without her. They shared memories and jokes and references she couldn’t understand. Mostly it was four other couples and Mick the bachelor, who with Steve made an even ten, a sort of tacit closed set involved in an old island square dance of friendship. She did not know the steps. She was the outsider, stumbling at the rim. The longer she felt left out, the more she longed not to long to be included; perhaps that was perverse of her. Perhaps she had too much pride.

  Perhaps everything was intertwined? All the couples but one had children, and over the past two years Sara had heard the wives announcing helplessly, “Oh, Lord, I’m pregnant, I don’t even know how it happened!” She knew how the group gossiped, how secrets were eagerly carried from person to person like treasure—she knew she could not bear it if these people knew that she was trying to get pregnant and failing. Again: her pride. Still, she had gone off-island to Hyannis to see the gynecologist six months ago. Rumors flew around the small community as abundantly as the seagulls circling the sky, and she did not want a Nantucket doctor or nurse to mention her problem to someone who would mention it to someone else—it meant too much to her.

  In the first year of their marriage, like many lucky couples, Steve and Sara experienced that drawing together of spirit and mind and body that made them feel there was something basic about their love, something elemental and rare, like the birth of twins. It was as if they had thought they were separate entities, but in their marriage realized they were truly two halves of a whole, as in turning, the moon shows its bright and dark sides joined. Now there was a fissure in that whole, a hairline crack running between them, so small still that they scarcely noticed it was there.

  They had not spoken of this. Sara was aware of it only because she realized that for the first time since her marriage to Steve she was relying heavily on Julia for sympathy and comfort and support. Perhaps it helped that Julia was not so close to the problem and could not be hurt by Sara’s infertility. Julia helped Sara put it all in perspective—gorgeous Julia, who had her own problem, her own secret—she was having an affair with a married man, she was passionately in love with that married man, who had some power and fame in the state. The last thing in the world Julia wanted was to get pregnant, and the easiest thing in the world Julia did was laugh, so she was able to put Sara’s plight in perspective for her. Thank God for Julia, Sara thought. And for Sara’s sister, Ellie, who lived in the Midwest and who was a nurse. Ellie was married, a mother, and sensible; she relayed relevant scientific tidbits about fertility to Sara just as Julia had begun, in her own wacky way, to send unscientific ones. With these two on her side, how could she fail?

  Perhaps she hadn’t failed. Perhaps—for it was the twenty-ninth day—Sara hurried into the bathroom and checked. No blood! Looking at herself in the mirror, she grinned gleefully, then cringed, once again regretting the haircu
t she had just gotten. She was getting superstitious. She was really getting nuts. First the weight, and then the hair, and now look at her.

  Six months ago, after the off-island doctor had told her to relax, Ellie had told Sara about a study about women joggers who had trouble getting pregnant, who even stopped having periods. So Sara had stopped exercising and watching her diet—it made sense in a sappy way—what baby would want to nestle in a bunch of bones? A plump and cushiony body seemed much more the sort of place for a baby to nest and grow. Over the past six months, Sara had gained fifteen pounds. Soft depths. She felt good—but she looked different, and now she thought perhaps she had gone too far.

  And the haircut—that had been even crazier. For years Sara had worn her thick blond hair in a simple style, parted in the middle, sleekly falling on each side to slant gently under just at chin level. She had always known she was pretty, and had chosen that severe style because she thought it made her look serious, intelligent, sensible, not given to vanity, the way an editor should look.

  But a few weeks ago at a group get-together, she had heard Carole Clark announce that she was pregnant. “God, I never should have had my hair cut,” Carole had said, laughing. “Every time I get my hair cut, I get pregnant!”

  Well, Sara had thought, hmmmm. There was a connection between hair and power—look at Samson and Delilah! After waiting for two weeks, so that no one might suspect what she was doing (she was that paranoid these days), she had gone to a local hairdresser and had her hair chopped very short. She said she wanted a “modern” look, not punk, but chic.

  When Julia saw her on a recent visit, she told Sara she looked like Boy George. Steve had jokingly asked if she was going to start wearing chains of safety pins in one ear. It was not a successful haircut: it was just too drastic.