by Nancy Thayer
Hugh followed, carrying his jacket and tie in his hand. “I’m sorry, Polly.”
With her hand on the doorknob, Polly said, “You know, I’m going to see other men now. So you’re free to see other women, too.”
“I don’t want to see other women.”
Polly managed to smile. “Sure you do. You might meet someone willing to be on the side.” She opened the door. “And I might meet someone willing to be part of a couple.”
Hugh opened his mouth to speak, then shook his head. He went out the door. “Good-bye, Polly.”
Polly shut the door. She leaned against it until she heard his car pull out of the driveway. Then she slid down onto the floor, laid her head on her arms, and wept.
37
Shirley pinched herself hard just above the elbow.
Ouch! That hurt!
Okay then, she wasn’t dreaming. She was really here, sitting on Harry’s deck looking out at the shining water, while he fixed dinner.
But the day had been such a fantasy, how could she believe it was real?
This morning, rattled and thirsty and just a little scared, she’d yanked her spandex tights up as she thrashed through the bushes, flailing her way out to the dirt road to wave down the red truck, the first sight of humanity she’d seen for hours. She’d hoped it was Harry’s, but she would have been grateful to see anyone who could help her find her way back to the main road.
“Shirley?” Harry’s tanned face had lit up in a smile.
“Harry! Thank heavens! Harry, I’m lost!”
“Well, jump in. Reggie, scoot over.”
She knew she looked red-faced and disheveled as she climbed into the truck. The golden Lab helped complete her toilette by giving her face a thorough licking, which succeeded in plastering quite a bit of her hair to her cheeks and forehead.
Harry gave her an appraising glance. “You look hot and bothered. Why not let me take you out to my place for a sail to cool you off?”
“Oh, Harry,” she confessed, “I don’t know how to sail.”
“Well, Shirley,” he told her with a grin. “I do.”
She explained that she’d lost her bike, and Harry laughed, put the truck in gear, and bounced them along over the dirt roads. Very quickly he found her bike.
Once again he tossed it in the back of the pickup. Then he turned onto Polpis Road and sped away from town. At an unmarked dirt path, not even a road, more like a pair of ruts worn between scrub brush and heathlands, he turned again. They bumped along through a thicket, and suddenly the vista opened up, exposing a small lawn and a modest one-story cottage looking down a slope to the water.
“Polpis Harbor,” he told her.
The water lay before them like an enormous blue platter full of light. On the other side of the harbor, in the distance, the rooftops of other houses could be spotted, but the curve of the land around the house in an expansive open roll of natural heath gave the illusion of protected isolation. A nearby shed, where Harry kept his sailboat in the winter, was actually bigger than the house, which, he told her, had been built in the sixties as a summer house.
Harry led her into his house. “You won’t want to wear those shorts sailing. Go on into the little bedroom at the back. Some old bathing suits are hanging on a hook behind the door. One of them’s bound to fit you okay.”
The cottage was very male, natural and unfussy. The wooden floors and walls had been left unpainted to darken naturally. Only the plaster between the beams on the ceiling had been painted white. The old buoys hanging from the walls in the living room brightened the place. His sofa was deep and worn, but his television was new, and his tables were covered with an array of books and magazines. On a desk in the corner a laptop sat blinking.
The only bathing suit Shirley’s size was a two-piece, and even as slender and fit as she was, her pale white abdomen, dotted with the tiny moles that had sprouted all over her torso during the past few years, had the pasty, loose look of bread dough—sprinkled with rye seeds—set aside to rise. So she pulled on an ancient striped blue Speedo that hung on her. For a moment she stood paralyzed, afraid to let him see her exposed like this, her limbs pale and scrawny, her neck wrinkled, her makeup washed away by that morning’s tears.
“Find everything okay?” he yelled.
Well, she couldn’t hide in the room for the rest of her life! “I did!” She forced herself to leave the room.
Harry had also changed into a bathing suit and a faded polo shirt. He wore a scalloper’s cap with a long bill, and he grabbed another one from the back of the door and plunked it down on Shirley’s head.
“You’ll need this, too.” He handed her a tube of sunblock. “You can put it on while I’m rigging the boat.”
She followed him outside and down to the water. They waded through the reedy shallows to a small rowboat, which Harry rowed out to Serenity, his catboat. It seemed to Shirley a pretty little boat with its single mast and curving lines. The golden Lab swam out, too, got a lift into the sailboat by Harry, and established herself next to Shirley, resting her head on her knee. Shirley watched as Harry raised the sail and did mysterious things with the ropes.
“This is the boom,” he said, touching the long heavy horizontal pole. “It swings back and forth when I tack, so when I tell you to duck, duck.”
She wanted to say, jokingly, “Aye, aye, Cap’n,” but at that moment the boat, with a little shiver, took off, racing away into the wide waters. Shirley swallowed as the safety of shore receded. Harry flashed her a smile. She laid her hand on the dog’s strong golden head and was reassured. Soon, lulled by the heat of the sun and the hypnotic beauty of the shoreline, she relaxed.
It was so quiet, sailing! No engine, no background grumble. Only the splash of the waves and the cry of the gulls. She and Harry were quiet together—at first, that felt awkward to Shirley, who called out, “Beautiful!” and “Wonderful!” to show her appreciation of the land, the water, and the boat Harry so obviously loved. But Harry merely responded with a nod and a smile, and soon she forgot about manners and obligations and did what she was always telling people to do—Be here now.
It was like being in a bottle of champagne when the cork pops and that first delicious foam spills over. The light, the air, the atmosphere were effervescent and crystal clear. They sailed through a narrow cut between two shoals and were out in the larger harbor, sailing to the long spit of golden beach called Coatue. The warmth of the sun was better than a sauna, the slight breeze cool and refreshing. Light dazzled across the water, tossing diamonds here and there, and in the distance the town rose like a dream.
She couldn’t help looking at Harry. His limbs were tanned and strongly muscled, scarred here and there, like those of one who’s done lots of physical labor. Vaguely she wondered how he could afford a house on the water; but that kind of thought didn’t belong in this kind of day, so she let it drift away.
She liked the way he moved. Economical, efficient, steady, he seemed to anticipate the demands of the water and wind. They anchored near Coatue. When Shirley followed his lead and jumped out into the cold water, her feet just touched bottom, so she felt safe as they waded up to the shore. He spread out an old blanket and opened a small cooler, handing her a bottle of seltzer and an apple. They lay around for a while, talking idly, then went for a long walk. Harry regaled her with information about the island, but Shirley was so dazzled by her increasing sense of desire for the man that he might as well have been speaking in Martian.
On the way home, Harry gave Shirley a sailing lesson. She loved the tug of the sheet and the immediate response of the catboat as it lifted or listed or turned, but Harry’s proximity tangled her thoughts. She felt so attracted to him—she felt that intense surge of lust and excitement she’d felt with her old boyfriends Justin and Jimmy, but she also felt oddly soothed by his presence. It had been a long time since she’d felt so alive.
When they returned to the house, it was evening. In spite of the sunblock Harry had given
her, Shirley felt slightly stupefied by the sun and the motion, and she was delighted when he suggested she take a cool shower while he threw together some dinner. She couldn’t help it—she snooped in his bathroom. No signs of a woman—good! A few bottles of pills. The same blood pressure medication Faye took, and Lipitor, which made her wonder. How could a man as fit as Harry have high cholesterol? It was a genetic thing, no doubt. She pulled on a terry cloth robe hanging on a hook on the back of the door and padded out barefoot to find the table on the deck already set with cheese and crackers and a plate of raw veggies.
Harry handed her a glass of iced water. “Nantucket has the best water in the world,” he told her.
“Thanks!” She leaned back in her deck chair and looked down the slope of lawn and brush to Polpis Harbor shimmering in the evening sun.
“What do you think?” Harry asked.
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven,” Shirley answered.
Even now, at seven in the evening, sailboats glided past, their sails as proud and white as swans, long ripples flowing behind them like trains on a wedding gown.
“It is a little paradise here,” Harry agreed, crossing his bare feet and resting them on the railing of the deck. “I think that every single day, even in January gale force winds.” Beside him, Reggie thumped her tail in lazy agreement.
“Don’t you ever get lonely?” Shirley swept her arm in an arc. “No houses nearby, and you can’t even see town from here.”
“Sure, I get lonely,” he replied honestly. “But I’ve come to treasure my isolation. In my earlier days, I spent enough time with people to last me forever.”
“What did you do?”
“Oh, what everyone else did. Had a corporate job, married, had two kids, traveled, then got divorced, drank too much, ate too much, screwed around too much.” His eyes rested on the water as if he were seeing his past floating there. “The only place I’ve ever felt at peace has been on this island. So a few years ago I retired here. And even at my loneliest, I don’t regret it.”
Shirley nodded.
“What about you?” Harry asked. “You told me you run a spa, right?”
“Well, I kind of own it. With the investors and the bank. Nora Salter’s one of the investors. I know her because I used to be her massage therapist. I’ve given massages all my life, but in the past few years, with the help of some friends, I started The Haven. I’m up to my ears in mortgage, but I’m living out a dream I’ve had all my life—to run a wellness spa.”
“Wellness spa means what, exactly?”
Shirley hesitated. Growing up, she’d been taught that if she wanted to keep a man’s interest, she had to get him to talk about himself, not dominate the conversation with her own interests. So her reply was brief, but Harry asked a question, and then another, and the sun slipped lower as they talked. She followed him into the kitchen and talked while he fixed their dinner. He respected her vegetarian beliefs, and made a simple pasta tossed with olive oil, fresh broccoli, garlic, cauliflower and tomatoes. He put a long baguette on a cutting board with several blocks of cheese, and carried it all out to the deck.
They ate in companionable silence, watching the water reflect the changing colors of the summer sky. He spoke about his childhood summers on the island, and how he’d tried to recapture that for his own children when he and his family summered here. He spoke about his children and grandchildren and stepchildren and step-grandchildren—he’d been married and divorced twice. Shirley told him she’d been married and divorced three times and had no children, and felt the loss. He nodded, understanding.
They carried their dishes into the kitchen where Harry washed and Shirley dried them as they waited for the decaf to drip into the pot, and then they fixed their mugs and took them back out to the deck. Shirley had never felt so at home with a man before. It was rather like being with a woman, except that as the sky drifted into a soft violet-gray, iridescent and indigo-streaked, like the inside of a mussel shell, she felt more and more sexually awakened. She felt like a night bird—an owl? A nightingale? The deep resonance of Harry’s voice warmed her, and when his eyes met hers, something sparked inside her; not just sexual desire, but also a kind of odd hope. She felt like a lost ship, and the blue flash of his eyes on hers flared like a beacon on a lighthouse, beckoning her toward a safe harbor.
When the sky had deepened to black velvet, Shirley said, “I’d better go.” Reluctantly, she rose. “Oh.” She looked down. “I’ve still got your robe on.”
Harry rose, too, and stood in front of her, just inches away. “Why don’t you take it off?”
Heat flooded through Shirley. Desire made her tongue-tied. “I—I’ll change back into my shorts.”
“That’s really not what I meant.” He put his hands on Shirley’s shoulders. He moved closer, so his chest almost touched hers and she felt his breath when he spoke. “Why not stay the night?”
“Um—Faye might worry?” Her voice came in a squeak.
“Phone her. Tell her you’re staying here tonight.”
She swallowed. She hadn’t experienced sensations this intense for months, if ever. Would she seem easy? Would she—
“I’ll respect you in the morning,” he said jokingly. “If you’ll respect me. Besides, you haven’t lived until you’ve watched the sun rise from my deck.”
She was trembling all over. His warm hands steadied her. I’m old, she wanted to warn him. When I lie down, my breasts look like a couple of dead jellyfish.
“I’m kind of scared,” she whispered.
“Don’t be,” he told her. He drew her against him, wrapping his arms around her, and kissed the top of her head. “You can trust me,” he said. Then he kissed her temples, very gently, and each of her eyelids, and the tip of her nose and each of her cheeks. He kissed the top of one ear, and the lobe of the other ear, and breathed warmly against her neck. He kissed her jawline, her sagging jawline, he kissed her chin. He took her head in both his hands, and softly, and for a very long time, he kissed her mouth. It was all Shirley could do not to knock him onto the deck and crawl all over him. She longed to let go of her fears and her vanity and her doubts, and trust him. And so, she did.
38
Just after noon on Sunday, Marilyn parked her Volvo in the lot nearest the International Terminal at Logan Airport, dropped her keys in her purse, said to herself, “I am dropping my keys in my purse,” then hurried into the terminal. She checked the display for the flight number and gate—yes! Ian’s flight was on time! She dashed into the restroom for a pee and a quick check of her reflection. She’d gone to the trouble of applying the various bits of cosmetics the Hot Flash Club had helped her buy and taught her to use. She supposed she looked as good as she could; she only hoped her lipstick wasn’t too bright—she seldom wore makeup, so when she did add some color to her face, she was afraid she looked like Bozo the Clown.
By the time she arrived at the gate, the passengers from the British Airways flight from Edinburgh were already streaming out of the customs area into the main terminal. Several rows of people loomed between her and the gate. She stood on tiptoe, watching for Ian.
And there he was! God, her heart thumped with joy at the sight of her skinny, balding, spectacled, geeky lover. He stooped as he walked, just the way Marilyn’s friends told her she stooped, no doubt a consequence of all the hours spent peering into microscopes. In his brown and green tartan long-sleeved button-down shirt and khakis, he looked ready for the lab or field work.
Next to him, her hand clutching tightly to Ian’s arm, was the woman Marilyn had to assume was Fiona. Marilyn’s breath caught in her throat. Ian hadn’t told her his friend’s wife was beautiful.
Fiona was tall and buxom. She wore a simple black silk dress that flowed against her generous curves as she walked. No makeup, no jewelry—and she didn’t need any. Her thick black and silver hair was pulled back in one of those effortless buns which allowed a few strands to escape, floating in curving frames around her face.
Her eyes were deep blue beneath the most exquisitely arched black velvet eyebrows Marilyn had ever seen.
Well, Marilyn thought guiltily, perhaps Fiona had bad teeth.
She didn’t. When the introductions were made, Fiona’s sad smile revealed flawless white teeth and—oh, God! Kill me now, Marilyn thought—adorable dimples. Her eyelashes were thick and black. She was a freaking goddess.
Ian hugged Marilyn to him briefly and kissed her firmly on the mouth, then made the introductions. They found Fiona’s luggage with its distinctive tartan tags and lugged it to the car. It seemed only right for Ian to drive and Fiona, who had never been to Boston before, to ride in the front passenger seat. Marilyn sat in back, trying not to feel left out. Fiona and Ian tossed conversational bits over the seats, laughing together as they described their trip, the food they were served, the clever way the flight attendant had dealt with an obnoxious family. Occasionally Ian interrupted their travelogue to point out a bit of scenery he thought Fiona might find of interest. The Charles River. The Museum of Science. MIT.
When they went into the house, an unusual noise exploded from the top floors, and to Marilyn’s amazement, Angus came stampeding down, his clumsy bulldog close at heel. Angus had bathed and shaved and dressed in clean clothing, a near miracle.
“Auntie Fiona!” he cried, and bumbled into her warm embrace.
Fiona ruffled Angus’s already tangled hair. “Ach, my darling, you’re a sight for sore eyes.”
“I’m so sorry about Uncle Tam,” Angus said. “It’s a terrible thing.”
“It is,” Fiona agreed, her eyes filling with tears. “It’s a terrible thing.”
Ian quickly moved to take Fiona’s arm. “Come into the living room and sit down, Fee. How about a nice cup of tea?” He looked over the top of her head at Marilyn, who nodded and hurried off into the kitchen.
