by Nancy Thayer
It was enough of a secret to embarrass Barton with, but not so terrible that he could be fired over it. It was perfect. She and Marilyn could go to an Internet café somewhere and e-mail everyone in TransWorld. Everyone would smirk when they read that Barton had silicone pec implants. Barton deserved, at the least, to be smirked at.
She finished the massage and went, automatically, into the kitchen to get him a glass of water, then to the bathroom, to give him time to dress.
“That was wonderful,” Barton said when she returned to the living room to pack up. He was stretching his arms, cracking his knuckles.
“Great.” Hoisting her table onto her shoulder, she said,
“You’ve got my card, if you ever want another massage or if you want to recommend me to friends, I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure.” He opened the door to the hall. “Thanks.”
She waited to the count of five. Most people who got free massages tipped her something, but Barton was obviously not going to. Well, then, she thought. Now she had no qualms about embarrassing him.
34
"Are you going to do it?” Shirley asked. Marilyn nodded, then realized Shirley couldn’t see her over the phone. “I am. Today. I’m going over to MIT now. I’ll use one of the lab computers.”
“Cool. What are you wearing?”
Marilyn looked down at her body. “My plaid wool robe. It’s so cool for Ma—”
“I don’t mean what are you wearing now!” Shirley said with laughter in her voice. “I mean, what are you wearing over to MIT?”
“Well . . .” Marilyn twisted the phone cord nervously. She was in the bedroom, and they hadn’t gotten around to installing portable phones yet. Now they never would. The house was on the market, and she had to decide what to do with the furniture and all their possessions: towels, sheets, pots, pans, china and silver not used for years . . .
“Marilyn?”
“Oh! Sorry. I was thinking—what did you ask?”
“What you’re wearing today. Look, just put on something you bought with the HFC, okay?”
“Well, I’m only going to the lab . . .”
Shirley sighed gustily into the phone. “Marilyn. Your husband’s left you for a younger woman. Maybe you don’t care what you look like, but I do. Wear your new clothes and put on some makeup.”
“Yes, yes, all right, I will.”
Marilyn hung up the phone and hurried to dress before she forgot what Shirley recommended. She had so much to think about these days! The divorce, and the sale of the house, and Barton’s treachery, and now this lovely bit of revenge. It would be perfect, embarrassing, but not life-threatening. Hurriedly she dressed, ran a brush through her great hair—short, shaggy hair was so easy to handle!—and rushed out of the house.
Thirty minutes later, she was inside the MIT lab. Just being there whetted her appetite for her own little project. It had been days since she’d devoted any time to her trilobite, and she felt guilty. Still, she had something more important to do first.
She meandered through the building, looking for an abandoned desk. She spotted an open laptop and noticed that a Web browser had been left open on an e-mail page. The sender was listed as “[email protected].” Perfect! She chose the Times New Roman 18 font and typed:
BARTON BAKER
HAS
SILICONE CHEST IMPLANTS!
She addressed the first e-mail to Frances, the receptionist on the thirtieth floor of TransWorld. Taking her notebook from her purse, she flipped it open to the list of names she’d brainstormed with Alice. Twenty secretaries, ten executives. Fingers flying, she spammed the e-mail to thirty people.
Then she leaned back in her chair and smiled.
She only wished she could be there when everyone read the announcement. No one would suspect Marilyn had sent it. How clever Shirley was, to have spotted those scars. Marilyn had actually been naked with the man and hadn’t noticed. Of course, the light had been low, and she’d been preoccupied . . .
In gratitude, she’d promised Shirley she would invest substantially in Golden Moments, but she wouldn’t be able to give her an exact figure until she met with her lawyer and had some idea how much money she’d have after the divorce.
“Marilyn?”
She jumped. “Oh, Faraday. Hello.”
“What are you doing in this part of the lab?”
“Oh, I, uh, um.” Marilyn exited the Internet and stood up. “I was just on my way to my work room, and I remembered something I had to check, so I just, um, used this computer . . .”
“I’m going that way myself. I’ll walk with you.”
“Oh. Well, good!” she said, flustered.
“You look lovely today, Marilyn.”
She glanced up at the tall Scot. “Why, you do, too.” And he did. His peppery hair, red and white and crisply rising from his head and framing his jaw, made her remember what Shirley said about red hair being vital, which made her think of virile, which made her blush.
He threw back his head and laughed. “First time I’ve been called lovely.”
His laughter, sonorous and easy, startled her at first. She couldn’t remember when she’d last heard a man laugh. It was a wonderful sound, and it made her nipples stand on end, straining for more. She felt them push against her silk blouse and hoped they weren’t noticeable.
“Oh, well, I mean, I,” she stammered.
He linked arms with her as they strolled along. “Lovely ’s a fine word, Marilyn. Tell me, how are you?”
“Why, I’m okay.”
“You don’t seem distressed.”
“Oh, you mean about Theodore?” Marilyn cocked her head. “Well, I am sorry, of course, but not actually distressed.” She looked at Faraday. His blue eyes were so warm, it made her remember how astronomers realized the hottest stars burn with blue light, how in spite of the common perception, blue is hotter than red.
“I’m divorced, you know,” Faraday volunteered.
“I didn’t know. What happened?” Marilyn tried to remember his wife. Sarah, she thought, a pretty blonde.
“We just grew apart. When the children grew up and left home, we discovered we had nothing to talk about.”
“And are you distressed?”
“I was at first. It’s been several years now. Sarah’s remarried, quite happily, to a man who owns an automobile dealership.”
“Really!”
Faraday smiled. “Surprising, I suppose, but I’m glad she’s happy. She never did understand all the fuss about paleobiology.”
“Well, it isn’t the sexiest science,” Marilyn observed, blushing deeply when she realized she’d said sex.
To her surprise, Faraday chuckled, as if she’d said something amusing. “You could be right. What, then, is the sexiest science?” He stroked his beard. “In vitro fertilization? Human genome technology? Cloning?”
She’d always loved intellectual discussions. “Space exploration,” she eagerly volunteered. “Because of the rocket shooting upward, penetrating space.”
This time Faraday didn’t laugh. He smiled. He stood right next to her, his body tall, massive, warm, radiant, a Jupiter of a man, and he smiled at her, his blue eyes warm.
“Well, well, Marilyn,” he said softly.
Oh, dear, Marilyn thought. He must think she was flirting with him.
Wait a minute, she thought. She was flirting with him! Accidentally, perhaps, but she could feel a connection between them.
“There’s a lecture on the Burgess Shale tomorrow night,” Faraday said. “I wonder if you’d like to attend it with me.”
“Oh, well, I’d love to do that, Faraday.” Her toes curled up in her shoes.
“How about a light dinner before?”
“That would be great.” Her heart grabbed her lungs and began to tango.
“Great. Why don’t I pick you up at six?”
“Wonderful. See you then.” Her mind stuck a rose behind her ear.
She watched him walk away. His shoul
ders were wonderfully broad. She estimated his height at about six-foot-two. She wondered if there were a correlation between body height and length of penis. Theodore’s penis was short and stubby, like him. That might mean that Faraday’s was—
“Good morning, Marilyn.” A lab assistant hurried past, giving her an odd look.
Marilyn realized she was hugging herself and grinning rather maniacally. She straightened. “Good morning, Ming Chu.” She turned to her workstation, bent over her length of shale, picked up her brush, then just stood there, eyes closed, thinking green and succulent thoughts.
Out at the Eastbrooks’, Faye was in Dora’s room.
“Yes, the pastels are beautiful.” Faye snapped one in half. “But they’re not sacred. They crumble, they break, and guess what? You can always buy more. You’ve got to experiment with them, get the feel of them, in your hand, on the different textures of paper. If you don’t like the way it looks or feels, we can move to oils or acrylics, but I think you’ll get to like pastels.”
Dora chose a rose pastel and broke it. “I told my mother that Lila gave me the pastels.” She touched the point to the paper fastened on the portable reading stand that now served as an easel.
“Good. Try different strokes,” Faye advised. “Long, direct, keeping the same weight. On some papers, the grain will cause the line to break or blur. That’s good. Use it.” She handed a yellow pastel to Dora. “Now try hatching this color over the rose. You can blend it, you can use your fingers to blur and burnish it. Remember how I showed you to do the main outline? Okay, here’s your subject.” She placed a green vase of red and yellow tulips on the table. “Loosen up your hand. Play around a bit first. Experiment. If you draw something awful, so what, you’ve learned something.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got to go, Dora. They’ll be back soon.”
She kissed Dora on her cheek. At the door, she looked back. The tip of Dora’s tongue pressed against the side of her mouth as she bent, rapt, to her work.
Faye went through the door into the family room, double-checking to make certain it was locked. Mrs. Eastbrook and Lila had gone down to the clinic for an organizational meeting, and Margie was in the kitchen preparing a beef Wellington for tonight’s dinner party, so Faye had taken the opportunity to see Dora. She did so often, now, with impunity. After all, she’d completed her assignment for the HFC. She could leave anytime. Working for Mrs. Eastbrook was growing tiresome, too; the doctor’s wife never eased up, relaxed, laughed, sang, or even stretched and yawned. She was strung tightly as a high-tension wire every minute, and Faye was pretty sure Mrs. Eastbrook hadn’t molded herself to fit her professional role. Eugenie Eastbrook would be pretentious in a Turkish prison.
Still, Faye was reluctant to leave Dora. She settled in at her desk to work on household bills. Relegating her personal thoughts to the back of her brain to simmer, she directed the computer to the bookkeeping program.
Her door to the hall was open, but she sensed rather than saw Mrs. Eastbrook and Lila pass. She heard Mrs. Eastbrook’s office door slam. From the other side of the wall came voices murmuring fast and low. The voices rose. Faye could understand them without straining.
“—don’t know how Teddy found out!” Lila’s voice was anguished. “It doesn’t matter how he found out! The point is, he knows about Dora, and he’s fine with it. He even suggested she come live with us after we’re married! You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“May I remind you, there’s more at stake here than you and Dora.” Mrs. Eastbrook’s voice was cold and brittle.
Lila’s tone was placating. “I understand how you feel—”
Mrs. Eastbrook interrupted. “If I agree to let Dora live with you after you’ve married Teddy, will you stop this foolishness about having Dora attend the wedding?”
“No! Come on, Mom,” Lila cried passionately. “Dora’s my sister. I love her. I want her at my wedding.”
Scornfully, Mrs. Eastbrook commanded, “Be reasonable, Lila. You know how Dora hates crowds. She says it’s painful for her to be stared at. It takes her weeks to recover—”
“So I’ll have a small wedding. I never wanted a—”
“Oh, please, Lila, don’t start this again! We’ve made all the wedding plans! The invitations have gone out. We can’t tell three hundred people we’ve changed our minds.”
“Of course we can, Mom! I don’t care about those people! This is my wedding day, and I—”
“You’ll be the star,” Lila’s mother purred. “Your dress, sweetheart, think of it! You look astonishing in it. This is a huge society event, and a crucial moment for your father and me, and for our clinic.”
“I don’t care about any of that! Not the dress, not society, not the damned clinic!”
“You don’t mean what you’re saying.”
“But I do!” Lila pleaded. “Mom, I want my own life. I don’t want to be your little showpiece anymore! I won’t be! I won’t be the star of your show, I won’t turn my own wedding into a spectacle! I don’t care whether Dad loses clients! I want my sister at my wedding!”
“Lila.” Eugenie Eastbrook’s voice darkened.
“I mean it!”
“I’m finding this very difficult, Lila.” Mrs. Eastbrook’s words were frosty with precision. “After all we’ve done for you, you refuse to do this one thing for us.”
“Oh, come on, I’ve done—”
“I think you should leave.”
“Leave?” Lila laughed with surprise.
“Leave this house. If you don’t care about us or the clinic, if this wonderful life, with every possible luxury, isn’t good enough for you, then just leave. Now.”
“Mom. Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me what to do!” Eugenie’s words shot like bullets. “Pack a bag. Pack it with whatever you want to take, because you’re not returning to this house. Call a cab. And give me the keys.”
“What?”
“I want the keys to the house, and the clinic, and I want the keys to your car. If you’re too pure to help us, then you’re too pure to drive that fabulous little convertible we gave you.”
Lila sounded astonished. “Mom. Please. What about Dora?”
“Dora’s my daughter. I know what’s best for her.”
“She’s my sister, and I love her!”
Eugenie Eastbrook was adamant. “It’s your choice, Lila. Either stay and have the wedding we’ve planned, or leave.”
“You’re insane. All the laxatives and injections and diets have finally—”
The slap was loud enough to resonate clearly through the wall.
The silence was louder.
Eugenie Eastbrook’s voice was glacial. “Give me the keys to the house and the clinic. All of them. And your car keys. Now, get out.”
Mesmerized at her desk, Faye listened. She heard Mrs. Eastbrook’s office door slam. She heard Lila sobbing as she ran down the hall and up the stairs. She waited to hear Eugenie Eastbrook cry, but the other room held only silence.
35
The good news was that Alan wasn’t lying around the condo like a basset hound on Valium anymore.
The bad news was that Alice was lying around the condo like a basset hound on Valium.
Friday morning, she didn’t even wake up until after nine o’clock. Groaning, she wrapped her robe around her and walked into the kitchen to find that her son had already gotten up and quietly slipped out, leaving her a note saying he’d be back that night, and, thoughtfully, a freshly brewed pot of coffee.
She poured herself a cup and carried it into the living room. That in itself was a change. Usually she slurped her morning coffee from a thick, rubbery mug with a plastic lid that prevented any liquid from spilling as she rushed around dressing for the day.
Today, she didn’t have anything to dress for.
It felt really odd.
Alice had always worked. At fourteen, back in Kansas, she’d held her first job as a waitress in Archer’s Café; since then, she’d never been w
ithout a job. Of course she’d had vacations, and good ones, when she reached the executive level at TransContinent, but the truth was, she’d never really enjoyed them unless she had some work to take along to build her day around. Alice Murray was all about accomplishment, and she had no idea what to do with herself without work.
She was giving another party for Golden Moments a week from Monday, so she wasn’t totally useless yet. But that was a long time away. She couldn’t get together for a brainstorming session with Shirley that day, because Shirley was doing the rounds of her masseuse jobs. Faye was out at the Eastbrooks. Marilyn was at MIT.
Alice was in her living room.
In her robe.
Well, hell. She might as well eat a pint of ice cream every night and fry bacon and eggs every morning for breakfast and sit around all day watching the hair grow on her legs.
Then she remembered that Esmerelda, the cleaning woman, was due at one. No way Alice could sit in her robe, watching TV, while another woman scrubbed her bathroom floor. No, Alice had to get out and do something.
At the HFC meeting the other night, they’d compiled a list of rules to live by, axioms that they knew from their struggles in the past would help them through the future, things they knew, even if they hated knowing them, like eating broccoli is good for the body. These were nutritional hints for the soul, like a kind of spiritual muesli. Near the top of the list was: If you’re depressed, get up, get dressed, and get out of the house.
So Alice picked up the Boston Globe entertainment section and snapped it open, recalling how the three other women had reprimanded her for having lived so long in Boston without ever having taken advantage of its attractions. Dutifully, Alice grabbed a pen and pad and scribbled a list—the physical act immediately cheered her. She loved seeing the words marching in file down the paper, black on white. A kind of exterior order seemed to be lying latent in her interior disarray, and that gave her hope.
Boston Aquarium.
