Morning

by Nancy Thayer

  “All right,” she said aloud. “Here I am. Look.” The ocean was calm today, but even so the waves rolled with noise, a steady booming that drowned out everything else. “I said here I am!” Sara shouted. “With my egg-shaped rock and my docks tied to my left arm and all my prayers aimed at every single generative force in this whole fucking universe! So do something! Give me a break!”

  She began to shiver. Her feet hurt unmercifully. In the warmer months, after a few moments in the water, one got used to the relative cold—but this was too cold. This was painful.

  Perhaps if she walked. The quote Julia had sent said “washed.” All right. Although she had no soap—but there was sand, the old primitive matter for washing. Pushing up the sleeves of her parka and sticking her gloves in her pocket, she leaned over and scrubbed at her feet with the sand, with small egg-shaped pebbles. Her hands contracted with the cold.

  Standing up again, she noticed a portly woman bundled in layers against the winter wind, walking along the beach toward her, her black Lab dog dashing and yelping joyfully.

  Shit, Sara thought. She felt intruded upon.

  “Are you all right?” the woman called, approaching Sara.

  Actually, no, Sara wanted to reply. Actually I’m insane, demented, absolutely berserk.

  “Just fine,” Sara called back cheerfully. Sticking her hands in her pockets, she turned in the opposite direction and strolled along casually, kicking at the water with her feet as if she were wading in August warmth. She racked her brain but could think of no rational explanation to give the older woman for standing barefoot in the freezing water, so she just went splashing on, until finally she was shaking with cold.

  She stepped out of the water then, sat down on the sand, and drew on her wool socks. Oh, the ecstasy of warmth. She looked out at the ocean. All right, she spoke silently to the ocean, to the natural force that ruled the ocean and all other universal forces. I’ve done my part. Now you do yours.

  When she got home, she took a long hot bath and drank cups of hot herbal tea, trying to ward off a cold. And when Steve got home for lunch, she attacked him. She made him gobble his lunch, then dragged him into the bedroom and attacked him. It could still happen, the timing could still be okay. He staggered off to work, exhausted but happy. Sara lay in bed, full of his seed, and fell asleep.

  “I’ve got a wonderful Christmas present for you, but you’ve got to leave the house to get it,” Sara said to Fanny. They were sitting in her blue living room, an applewood fire blazing next to them, the animals nearly comatose from the heat.

  Fanny set her teacup down gently in its fragile saucer. “Sara,” she began.

  “No, I won’t take no for an answer,” Sara said. “It’s a beautiful day, the streets and stores are glorious with Christmas decorations, and you are coming with me if I have to wrestle you from this house.”

  “What an inelegant image,” Fanny said, smiling, faintly.

  Sara could tell that Fanny was displeased. Really pissed, though she’d never use that word.

  “Fanny, you’re going to England next month. Now really, be sensible. Do you think you’re going to waltz out the door, onto a plane, and through all of London when you haven’t left this house for four years? You’ll be so shocked—so disoriented—it would be crazy. You’ve got to go out a few times before then, test the water, get used to it. Now come on, you know I’m right.”

  “I can’t go out today. My hair is a disaster,” Fanny said. A tiny strain of petulance streaked her graceful voice.

  “I know,” Sara said. “But you can put a hat on over it. And that’s part of my gift—we’re going to get you a new hairstyle. We’re going to a beauty salon.”

  Fanny rose, indignant. “My hairstyle is perfectly fine. There is nothing wrong with my hairstyle. I’ve had it for years.”

  Sara was silent, letting the expression on her face say: Precisely. That’s just the point.

  Fanny began to do her slow, fluttery pacing around the room. She changed tactics. “Sara, dear, this is thoughtful of you. I can certainly see that. And undoubtedly you are right. I should go out a bit before I go to England. Like practicing. And I will. But not today, not so suddenly. You’ve rather sprung this on me, you know.”

  “Fanny,” Sara said, “you know it wouldn’t have worked any other way.”

  Now Fanny was trembling with anger. “And it is not working now!” she said. “I will go out of this house when I decide to, not under anyone’s pressure.”

  “There’s more news about Jenny’s Book,” Sara said. “Interesting news. Quite a bit, actually. And I won’t tell you until you’re at the hairdresser’s with me.”

  “Fine,” Fanny said. “Don’t. I can always call my agent.”

  “He won’t tell you. No one will tell you. I’ve talked to them all and they agree with what I’m doing and they’ve promised not to tell you.”

  Fanny flushed with anger. She turned her back on Sara and walked toward the door at the far end of the room. When she turned back to Sara, she had tears in her eyes. “This is blackmail,” she said.

  “So, call the police,” Sara said cruelly. “You would have to let them come in the door to talk to you, to see you.”

  Fanny turned her back again. Sara rose, went toward her a few steps, and said in a conciliatory voice, “Fanny, please. Think a moment. If it’s this hard for you to go out with me, just to a hairdresser, just think how hard it will be to go to England. You’ll be paralyzed; you won’t be able to go. You’ll miss everything. Fanny, this is like—like learning to walk again. You’ve got to take this first step.”

  “All right,” Fanny said, her voice low. “Let me go change my clothes.”

  Sara knew that if she let Fanny out of her sight she would probably barricade herself in her bedroom for the next twenty years.

  “No,” she said to Fanny. “You’re fine. Your dress is fine, your makeup is fine. All you have to do is put on your coat. I rented a car in Hyannis and drove up here so that you wouldn’t have to deal with a taxi driver. Just me, then the beauty salon, filled with women who no matter what their age couldn’t hold a candle to you.” As she spoke, she could almost see the tension ebb from Fanny’s body. “Fanny, I know just how you should have your hair cut.”

  “Cut?” Fanny asked, her hand reaching for her hair. “Why should I have my hair cut?”

  “Because you look like you’re ready to sing opera,” Sara said. “You have beautiful thick hair, but when you wear it piled up like that, you look older than you should. Grandmotherly. I’ve even talked with the hairdresser about you, and we’ve agreed on something that would be marvelous for you.”

  “I can’t have my hair cut short,” Fanny said, her confidence returning slightly on the wings of her inexorable powers of judgment. “It would not be sensual, feminine, to have my hair cut short.”

  “It won’t be short,” Sara promised. “It will be elegant. Not faddish, though. Classic. Even sexy. But very simple.”

  Fanny came back into the room. She put her hand up to her hair. “I haven’t had my hair styled in years,” she said.

  “Remember how luxurious it is?” Sara said seductively. “How good it feels to have someone else wash your hair and massage your scalp? This is a very good hairdresser we’re going to, the best.” She was close enough to Fanny now to reach out and gently take her hand. Fanny’s hand was silky and plump. Carefully, as if she were leading a wild colt who would bolt at any startling movement, she urged Fanny toward the living room door and out into the hallway.

  There stood the gruesome Eloise. For one wild moment Sara feared that Fanny would fling herself at her housekeeper, crying for protection, while Sara attempted to wrestle her away.

  Instead, Fanny said, calmly, as if she were asking for more tea, “I’d like my coat, Eloise. The mink. Please find my gloves, too. The brown suede lined with cashmere. I’m going out.”

  Except that her eyes bugged out of her head, Eloise expressed no surprise. She only
nodded and, eyes bulging, went off to fetch Fanny’s things. Fanny looked at Sara, and to Sara’s immense surprise, Fanny snorted, the only way she could let out her suppressed laughter. So Sara knew it was going to be okay. Fanny was going to be okay.

  Sara had parked the rented sedan right in front of Fanny’s house. Fanny made her way to the car with her shoulders hunched forward and her head bowed nearly into her chest, as if she were a criminal averting her face from a hungry press. Once in the car, however, she seemed to relax. After adjusting her scarf so that it curved in concealment around her face, she turned her head toward the window, then faced front.

  “I’ll never forgive you for this, you know,” Fanny said as Sara started the car.

  Sara grinned. “Yes, you will,” she said. She tried to keep the triumph from her voice. “I think you will.”

  After that they rode in silence—until Fanny began to notice the sights they were driving past. “Oh, look at that,” she said. And, “Oh, I had forgotten that.” And, “The river looks like gunmetal today.” Sara knew Fanny was not talking to her. She was talking to no one, she was expressing delight and amazement at the buildings, trees, railings, churches, colleges, bridges, parks, sidewalks—all the outside world that she had not seen for four years.

  Chapter Eleven

  “God, Sara, look at you,” Steve said.

  It was New Year’s Eve. They were getting ready for a huge party that the group was going to at a local hotel and restaurant, a champagne dinner at nine and then dancing in the hotel’s grand lobby.

  Steve had worked late, because it was sunny and warm, then come home exhausted and fallen asleep for a few hours. Now he was just coming from the shower, naked, his hair damp, smelling of shaving lotion.

  Sara was standing by the bedroom dresser, putting her earrings on. She was wearing a dress that her sister had worn in college, when dresses like this were called “semiformal.” It was an old-fashioned dress that had come back into style and would always be alluring: simple black taffeta, strapless, with a full poofed skirt that swung just below her knees. The waist was very tight. The top was very low, so that her breasts swelled upward from the curving bodice. She was wearing high black heels and rhinestone earrings that fell in sprays from her ears. No other jewelry. It was a fabulous look, and she knew it.

  But she hadn’t expected Steve to notice it. He was so zonked out these days with his work, either tired or worried, he scarcely noticed her at all, and she didn’t mind, she had some idea of what he was going through, because she was so engrossed these days in setting down the guidelines for the new Heartways House series. Some of the financial pressure had eased with the big checks they had received for Christmas from both his parents and her mother. Still, they had to be careful and hardworking. One of the reasons she had decided to wear this dress tonight was that it meant she didn’t have to buy a new one, or wish that she could buy a new one.

  Now that Sara had so inadvertently captured her husband’s attention, she basked in it, pleased. She turned slowly in front of him, holding the skirt. “You like it?” she asked.

  “I like you,” Steve said. “You are the most beautiful woman on the planet.”

  “Oh, Steve,” Sara said, and felt tears of joy rush to her eyes. In the early days, when they had just met, he would say things like that all the time, but it had been years since he had said anything so extravagant.

  He started dressing, in gray flannels, a pink button-down shirt, and his navy blue blazer, then sat down on the bed to put on his shoes. “When was the last time I wore this blazer?” he asked. “It seems like ages.” Abruptly he looked up at Sara and asked, “Do you ever think about how different our lives could have been if we’d made different choices? For example, if I’d kept on teaching at the prep school. Then I’d be wearing clothes like this every day.”

  “Then you never would have met me!” Sara said. She sat on the bed and leaned against the headboard. It was unusual for Steve to be so talkative. Probably the fact that he had tomorrow, New Year’s Day, off was helping him relax. Whatever the reason, she was happy; she loved talking with him. She loved knowing what he was thinking about.

  “Well, then, if we hadn’t decided to come to Nantucket. Would I still be working for Masterson? Or would I have decided to go out on my own in Boston? And if we hadn’t moved, you might be senior editor at Walpole and James now.”

  “I’m not sorry we came here, are you?” Sara asked.

  “No,” Steve said. “I love it here. And in spite of my anxieties, I think my business is going to make it. And I think I’m going to make a difference—infinitesimal, but real—to the way this island looks. No, I’m glad I’m here. But when I see you looking the way you do now, Sara, I wonder if … if you ever have doubts.”

  “None,” Sara said honestly. “I love it here. The only thing that bothers me is that I feel guilty about this trip to England. I hate to think of being away from you for a whole week. It doesn’t seem right. Sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  Steve laughed. “Do you know what I’m planning to do while you’re gone? I’m going to buy eight big cans of chili or beef stew and eight pints of Häagen-Dazs and several six-packs of Michelob and eight packages of pretzels, and every night when I come home from work I’m going to sit in front of the TV and drink beer and eat my stew and ice cream and veg out. When I want to get wild, I’ll have another beer and some pretzels. I’m not going to answer the phone or go to any parties, hell, I may not even shave. I’m really going to be a slob.”

  Sara laughed. Then, “You know,” she said, turning aside, “I’m having my period again.” She waited for him to speak. When he said nothing, she said, her voice surprising her with its bitterness, “Why don’t you say something? Sometimes I feel lonely, trying to have a baby and grieving when I don’t.”

  “Sometimes I feel lonely, too!” Steve said, his voice raised. “Sometimes I think that baby’s all you care about—it seems to be just about all you think about.”

  “Oh, Steve,” she protested, turning to face him.

  “No, wait,” Steve said. “Listen to me. I’ve got a lot on my mind now with my business, problems with the bookkeeping, supervising all my men, making decisions I’m not used to making. And sometimes when I try to talk to you about it, I see you sort of fade away from me. I mean you sit there looking at me and nodding, but I know you’re thinking about that baby.”

  “If you were in my body,” Sara said, “if you knew what it was like to wonder what every little twinge meant—”

  “But there’s more than that, Sara,” Steve said, putting his hands on her arms. “Don’t you see, there has to be more than that for us. Sure, I want to have a baby, and we will, but I also want to build up my business and my reputation, and I want to make a difference to this island and the way it develops. And I wish I had someone who cared about it to really listen to me. If you can’t focus on me now and then, on me just for a few minutes—well, then, what’s our marriage about?”

  Sara put her hands on her husband’s chest and looked up at him. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m sorry. I think I’ve gone a little bit mad. And I do think of you, you know—I keep feeling that I’m failing you by not getting pregnant.”

  “Sara, believe me, I’m glad we don’t have a kid right now. I don’t think I could handle it. It’s fine with me if you don’t get pregnant for months.”

  Well, it’s not fine with me! Sara wanted to scream, but a warning voice inside her said: Haven’t you been listening to Steve?

  “Is there something wrong?” Sara asked. “Are you having any special problem?”

  The look on Steve’s face was a gift. “No,” he said. “No one special problem—it’s all one giant headache.” He began to elaborate on his problems with a house he was restoring at ’Sconset. Sara listened, responded, asked questions. Suddenly they realized they were late for the dinner-dance, and they rushed out the door, still talking. As they entered the restaurant Sara felt Ste
ve’s arm around her shoulders, keeping her close to him. It was as if they had just finished making love—which, in a way, they had. She felt closer to him than she had for a long time, and more in love.

  The Harbor House was glittering with holiday glamour. In the middle of the dining room a vast Christmas tree, dripping with decorations, towered to the arched ceiling, flashing its bright lights through the room like a lighthouse beacon. The group had its own long table at one end of the room, and everyone was there: Pete and Carole, Wade and Annie, Sheldon and Jamie, Mick and his newest girlfriend, the nymphet Cindy, Bill and The Virgin, and another couple, Watson Marsh and Eileen O’Hara, friends of the Clarks who had come to celebrate the holidays on Nantucket. The meal was delicious, and everyone drank champagne and ordered more champagne; then the band started playing and everyone danced and drank champagne. The room was filled with people and music and laughter under the crepe-paper-garlanded lights.

  It was after midnight when Sara and Annie staggered off to the bathroom to repair their makeup. They had just plopped down on the long pink-cushioned seats when Carole and Jamie came in with the new woman, Eileen.

  “What a little whore!” Eileen said. She was crying, and her mascara had streaked two black tracks down her face. She collapsed on a bench next to Sara. “What a cunt!”

  Two women in their sixties looked askance at Eileen, who did not notice them.

  “I know,” Carole said, “I know, Eileen, I’m so sorry.”

  “What’s wrong?” Annie asked.

  “Watson’s gone off with Mary,” Carole said.

  “What?” Sara asked, amazed.

  “Yeah,” Carole said. She and Jamie both scrunched down on the other pink sofa.

  Sara saw the look Carole gave Annie. It was the look of conspirators, of tired and depressed conspirators.

  “Carole, I don’t understand,” Sara pressed.

  Carole sighed. “I hate telling tales. But surely you’ve noticed by now, about Mary, I mean.”