“Oh god,” Nick said, peering into the bowl at the broken and glittering remains of gelatin. “It’s disgusting.”
“No, it’s the most beautiful aspic in the world. Every man is going to be green with envy that I have such a creative wife.” Hughes smiled at her. “Darling, please. It’s going to be all right.”
“It’s not all right, Hughes. It’s really, really not all right,” Nick said, putting her hand over her eyes.
“It will be all right,” he said, prying her hand away and turning her chin to face him. “I’m sorry. Our life is lovely. You’re lovely and I’m going to be a better husband to you. I’m going to take care of you, darling, I promise.”
“Hughes,” Nick said. “Hughes, please, I want to go home.”
“I’m going to take you home, Nick,” he said. “And everything will be all right.”
1947: FEBRUARY
Nick sat smoking in the kitchen, half listening to a program about birds and rubbing her drum of a belly. She looked out over the backyard, which, like her stomach, was hard and asleep. Here and there, a sparrow picked hopefully at the unyielding ground. After a commercial for Bromo-Seltzer, the announcer broke back in.
“We’re back with Miss Kay Thompson reading from Winfrid Alden Stearns’s seminal manual New England Bird Life, which has been delighting bird lovers for over sixty years.”
A woman’s voice, husky with a New England twang, drifted up through the radio.
“The whip-poor-will, a bird belonging to a family peculiar in many important respects, and of such singular habits and general appearance that superstitions no less dismal than ridiculous have attached to its mysterious manners, is a common summer resident throughout New England. It has a number of amiable and admirable traits, among which are its parental affection and its conjugal fidelity.”
Nick checked the meringues baking in the oven. Hughes had become positively obsessed with meringue following a recent work luncheon at a French restaurant. So strange, the desires he picked up when he was away from her. It never ceased to amaze her to find out that he suddenly loved this or that, when only that same morning he had left the house a fairly well-known quantity. But, despite these small, surprise passions, she did feel she knew him better. Or maybe she knew their marriage better; she was beginning to learn that the two weren’t the same thing. Such an ugly, mediocre word, “compromise,” Nick thought. But things had become smoother, like a creaky door whose hinges had finally gotten greased. And Nick had paid for that with compromise.
When they came home to Cambridge, he had bought her this house. Nick had thought that perhaps they could go live at Tiger House, if only for a little while, to wash away the hot, stale Florida air. But Hughes had immediately put his foot down.
“I can’t work there, Nicky,” he told her over dinner in their temporary apartment on Huron Avenue. “And we’re not asking my parents for money.”
Hughes had gotten a job as an associate lawyer at Warner and Stackpole, where his father worked. And then in February, he had found the house. “Built by the first woman architect to graduate from MIT,” he told her. She knew this was supposed to be an incentive for her to love it. She could see herself through his eyes: difficult, combative, someone who would have something in common with this disruptive female pioneer, who was probably a lesbian anyway.
The way he had taken her through the rooms—touched the doorframes and spread his arms wide in the kitchen to show her where the counter would be—she had known he was buying a place to put her in. A place for her to be perfect in, where all her strangeness would be sucked out of her, or at least hidden. She had been sick with the thought of it.
As she unpacked their boxes, dusted off wedding silver, hung his shirts, she imagined herself running away to Europe, renting an apartment on the Champs-Élysées or the Via Condotti, drinking small dark coffees and dancing in the cafés until dawn. But aside from buying a very expensive set of French lingerie, she made no move to get away, except in her head. If she knew he was trapping her, she also knew that she loved him, or rather she had him under her skin, like a fever. Wherever she went, she would be sick with him. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she had stopped fighting it. And just like that, as if her capitulation had broken the dam, he had begun to see her, to really see her.
“You’re amazing,” he said one day, when he came home to find the table set with the good linen and silver, and Nick patting down a round, rosy side of beef she had gotten cheap from the butcher.
Another night, he touched her knee under the table, after she had prepared an impeccable dinner of cold cucumber soup, lamb chops, roast potatoes and spinach for a partner at the law firm he wanted to impress.
“You’re a lucky man to have a wife that can really cook,” the partner had said. “A man like that can go far.”
Hughes had taken her dancing at the Spring Ball in Boston, and pressed himself against her, his arm wrapped tight around her waist.
“I could get drunk just smelling you,” he whispered in her ear. “You always smell like home.”
When he made love to her, he held her face in his hands and watched her.
“Tell me you’re happy,” he said once. “I want to know I’ve made you happy.”
So the little things were done, done perfectly. And in between, she read her books and listened to her music and thought up plans for them. And she thought that maybe when he felt that everything was good and safe, maybe he would wake up and want to be free again, with her.
Then there was the talk of a baby.
“I don’t want one, Hughes,” she told him one night at dinner, over the remains of a peppered pork chop. “Not now, at least.”
“Everybody wants a baby,” he said.
“That’s a ridiculous thing to say.” She brushed some scattered pepper off the white tablecloth. “And anyway, we’re not like everyone else,” she added quietly.
“Nick,” he said. “I know this isn’t how you imagined things. It’s not how I thought things would be, either. But then there was the war.”
“The war, the war. I’m sick of it.” She stood to start clearing the plates. “That can’t be the excuse for everything.”
Hughes caught her wrist.
“I’m serious, Nick. I really want a family.”
“Well, I’ve got some news for you, Hughes Derringer,” Nick said, wrenching away from his grasp. “I’m serious, too.”
“I want us to live our lives. Just live them.” He was searching her face. “Can’t you understand that?”
“Don’t talk to me as if I were a child.”
“Then don’t act like one.”
His tone had changed from passionate to chilly in an instant, and a silence—a dangerous one, Nick knew from experience—lay between them.
“I’m not trying to make you angry,” he said finally. “I want a life … Maybe not exactly like everyone else’s, but not complicated, either.”
“A baby,” she said, “is going to be complicated.”
“I want to make something, something good and real.”
“We already have something good and real. Why can’t you see that?” She looked at his face; it already seemed weary. She tried to get a grip on the heat rushing through her, the feeling of desperation causing her legs to shake.
“It’s just …” She sat down and put her hand over his. “Oh, Hughes, we’ll have to be so careful with a child. Our life, it’ll be … careful.”
“Not careful,” he said. “Deliberate.”
Nick thought about him, the way he always returned his cuff links to their proper box, instead of putting them in the vide-poche on his bureau, or the way he never lost the covers for his Swiss Army knives, the way most people did the minute they got them home. All the little things she had always found so moving. Hughes wanted to be careful, he took pleasure in it. He wanted life just the right temperature, not too hot, not too cold. But Nick wasn’t sure she could survive all this smoothing down.
“I don
’t know, Hughes,” she said finally. “We’re still young. We could do things before we have a baby.” Yet even as she said it, she felt the weight of the house he had bought her and knew it might already be too late.
“What things? Travel? I’ve been abroad, the world’s no better out there than it is here. And anyway, we can always travel as a family.”
Nick thought about Europe, about wrought-iron balconies and large windows and the feel of a foreign language on her lips.
“I don’t know if I can be that careful, deliberate, whatever you want to call it,” she said.
Nick pulled the meringues out of the oven and set them to cool. She had to extend her arms at full length to place them on the rack, taking care not to knock her large belly against the counter. She stood back and admired her handiwork; they were large snowy-looking things, peaking and dropping along the ridges, lovely, it was true, but she preferred macaroons. Grittier, with their bits of coconut.
After their conversation about the baby, Hughes hadn’t brought it up again. But when Nick found out that same month that Helena was pregnant, he had paid for her train ticket from Los Angeles.
“It will be nice for you two to see each other again,” he told Nick. “Anyway, I’m not so sure about that Avery fellow.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Nick said.
Nick knew Hughes was thinking that seeing Helena happy in her pregnancy might change her mind about a baby, but she didn’t care. She hadn’t seen her cousin in the seven months since they had packed up and left the house on Elm Street, and she missed her. She was uneasy about her; Helena seemed so bowed and tired every time she talked about Avery and his plans for the two of them.
Helena arrived in Cambridge in May, just when the lily of the valley was spreading across the yard in a blanket of glossy dark green and delicate white. Nick picked a small bouquet to take when she met her train at South Station.
“Helena, my word. You don’t look the littlest bit pregnant,” Nick said, laughing and hugging her close when she descended onto the platform.
“Really? I feel huge.” Helena was wearing a sky-blue suit, made from some lightweight wool, or one of the man-made blends that were all the rage.
“You look positively glamorous. Don’t tell me you’re in the pictures now, too.”
“Dear Nick,” Helena said, smiling. “You haven’t changed a bit. Still lying through your teeth every chance you get.”
Nick handed the porter a quarter from her red leather purse and took her cousin by the hand. “Hughes has even given us taxi money, so we’ll be traveling in style.”
“Oh, it is good to be home,” Helena said. “You don’t know how happy I am.”
“Well, I know how happy I am.” Nick waved at an idling cab. “I’ve almost been completely transformed into the perfect housewife. I’ll need you to examine my head later. Come on, let’s get home. Lunch and wine await.”
When they arrived at the house, Helena went to freshen up in the guest room, while Nick set the small round table in the garden room and began fixing a tuna salad. When she came back down, Helena had removed her little blue hat and her blond curls brushed her shoulders. Her face looked rosy and plump, like an advertisement for Christmas.
“Well, pregnancy does agree with you, I’ll say that for it,” Nick said. “What is it, three months now?”
“Four,” Helena said, seating herself at the green Formica counter. “Or at least that’s what the doctor told me. I’m not sure I trust him, though. I think he may be a bit of a quack.” She sighed. “But Avery says that all the good actresses go to him, so …”
“The only thing good actresses do is have abortions,” Nick said. “You really should come back here and have it. You could see Dr. Monty.”
“I thought Dr. Monty was dead,” Helena said, laughing.
“No, sir. Alive and kicking and still pinching the nurse’s bottom.” Nick looked at her cousin, then turned back to arranging the lettuce on the plates. “Hughes wants one.”
“A nurse to pinch?”
“I wish it was just that. No, a baby.”
Helena smiled. “It’s not a death sentence, you know. It’s actually quite nice.”
“So they tell me. Oh, Helena, can you see me elbow deep in dirty diapers? He’s already got me chained to the stove. What more does he want?”
“Oh, stop pretending you don’t love him.” Helena spread her arms out around the kitchen. “All this.”
“Of course I love him,” Nick said. “I just thought it would be a little more exciting.”
“Marriage is a haven,” Helena said quietly. “You’ll never be alone again.”
“Not marriage,” Nick said. “Life.” She looked out the window and then turned quickly back to her cousin. “I mean, think about Elm Street. We could do exactly as we pleased and no one expected anything of us. I even miss those horrible ration books. I wish it could be like that now, for me and Hughes. Not all stuffy and respectable. Sometimes I want to rip my clothes off and go running down the street stark naked and screaming my head off. Just for a goddamn change of pace.”
“That was the war, not real life,” Helena said. “And it wasn’t all good.”
Nick sighed, remembering Fen. “You’re right. I’m being a twit.” She forced a smile onto her face. “Enough of this. Darling, why don’t you pour the wine. It’s right next to you on that funny counter Hughes designed.”
“He really has bought you a lovely house,” Helena said, filling the two small jelly jars Nick had rescued from their apartment.
“Yes, a lovely house for a good wife,” Nick said, bringing the knife down on a stalk of celery. “I shouldn’t say that, it’s nasty. But damn men, anyway.”
“Nick, you really are impossible. You want too much. It’s like flying in the face of God, as Mother used to say.”
“And Avery?” Nick asked, suddenly piqued by Helena’s stoicism. “Is he everything you want? Is god so damn pleased with you both?”
“We’re living in a rented house,” Helena said, thoughtfully. “I would like to have one of my own. Then again, it is a lovely little bungalow, with a spare room for when the baby comes.”
“You can be so dense sometimes, darling,” Nick said, putting the knife down on the cutting board. “I want to know about your husband, not your living arrangements.”
“Oh.” Helena seemed to withdraw slightly from Nick’s gaze. “Well, I don’t know. The same as usual, I guess.”
“Lord, Helena, you’re slower than molasses in January.” Nick felt like hitting her on the head with the celery stalk. “What is the same as usual?”
“Nick, he’s not like other men, you know. I mean, he’s an artist, really.”
“What on earth are you talking about? Avery isn’t an artist, he sells insurance, for god’s sakes.”
“Yes, to earn his living. But his real passion is films,” Helena said, peering into her glass as if she was looking for something. “Actually, he’s very meticulous about it. You see, he has this collection.”
Nick walked over and sat down next to her cousin. “A collection.”
“Yes, well, actually, you see, he had this friend, this actress, and she was very good and very talented and very beautiful. And they were going to make films together, she was going to be the star and he was going to raise the money, but then, well, then someone killed her and he was just absolutely heartbroken. It changed everything for him.”
“I see.” And Nick did think she was beginning to see just what Avery Lewis was all about. “That all sounds very dramatic.”
“Well, yes,” Helena said. “And he didn’t feel like he could go on. And then he met me and he realized that he didn’t have to do it alone. You see, he’s dedicated himself to showing the world the talent that she was. So, he’s started this collection. Of her.”
Nick could barely believe what she was hearing; Helena could be guileless at times, but she wasn’t a complete idiot. “So, how is he doing with all that? Sho
wing the world what a talent his ex-mistress was, I mean?”
“I knew you wouldn’t understand,” Helena said, jerking her chin. “Most people don’t. It’s a work of art, someone’s whole life. As if I collected everything about you in order to capture your essence. And he’s going to make a film. That’s what Avery is doing.”
“Essence, my foot.” Nick tried to make eye contact with her cousin, but she wouldn’t look at her. “Honestly, Helena.” She shook her head in wonderment. “I knew something funny was going on out there, but I didn’t realize he had you convinced that it was art.”
“You’re being unfair,” Helena said. “He may be unusual, but what’s wrong with that? He loves me and, Nick, he understands me. I owe him my support.”
“Your financial support, you mean.” Nick saw her cousin’s face color, and she felt her passion receding. She put her hand on Helena’s shoulder, saying gently, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be critical. But really, darling. This is cracked, you can see that, can’t you?”
“Nick, he’s my husband. And my second at that. I don’t plan to get a divorce and move on to number three.”
Nick pulled Helena to her and put her cheek against her soft hair. “We could ask someone at Hughes’s law firm.”
“I’m having a baby.”
Nick drew away and looked at her for a moment, and then slowly nodded her head. “Right. Of course you are.”
“The whip-poor-will may be in the brush where it has hidden during the hours of light, or it may have stolen close to the house. It may even drop unperceived on the housetop, and cry out with sudden vehemence in the middle of the night, perhaps sending a shiver through those persons whose nervous organization is susceptible of impressions ominous or superstitious.”
Nick felt the baby kick, like a very small flash of lightning running down her belly. She began sorting through the mail. In one pile, she put the bills for Hughes to look at when he returned from work. In another, she put their social correspondence, which she would have to reply to tomorrow, after the ironing.
“Oh god, life is boring,” she said to the empty kitchen.
Tigers in Red Weather Page 5
