Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  From time to time, in spite of all her attempts to the contrary, Nell found herself wondering what it would be like if she and Andy were to marry, if the four of them were to live together as a family. It was a hard thing to imagine. She had gotten used to Andy’s idiosyncracies. She knew now how much he liked his privacy and solitude, how impatient he was with small talk, how tactless he often seemed with his blunt questions. He was not a gregarious man, and at first Nell had been delighted by this. She knew she was prone to irrational and extravagant jealousy, knew that if she saw him talking with another single woman—or married woman, for that matter—she would be eaten up inside by her own nasty suspicions. She knew she was most content when she was with him or, if she couldn’t be with him, knew he was by himself. But soon she began to wish that he enjoyed people just a little more. She liked parties. When she was invited to cocktail parties or dinner parties, she always asked Andy to join her, and more often than not, he had at least a nodding acquaintance with the hosts and other guests. He would be polite at a party, although from time to time Nell had seen him peering at a person with his forehead wrinkled in a frown and she knew that Andy was thinking: Can this person be for real? Why would he choose to spend his life this way? Andy was arrogant; he found almost all of the professions of modern man almost hilariously unnecessary. Sell insurance? Make jewelry? Run a hotel? Write ads? Surely that was no way to live a life.

  At one party Nell had been smoldering with jealousy because a lovely woman had approached Andy, swiveling as she walked, and had engaged him immediately in a serious conversation. God, Nell thought, I wonder what she does. When she could stand it no longer, Nell had excused herself from her conversation and made her way across the room to Andy’s side. She was glad she did, for Andy was, in his own quiet way, lambasting the poor lovely woman for selling real estate on Nantucket. Nell arrived just in time to hear him tell the woman that she was a parasite on society who destroyed the land for her own gain.

  Still, Andy could be wonderful if he liked someone. He enjoyed talking to Clary about her work with rats. He listened to her stories about them carefully and asked innumerable questions. He was more lenient in his judgments about Clary and her friends, perhaps because he thought of them still as children, even though they were in their twenties and early thirties. He was able to excuse their silliness because they were young.

  What would he think of Jeremy and Hannah? Nell wondered as the first of August approached. At least they were young—he couldn’t judge their choice of profession yet. But she wanted him to do more than tolerate them; she hoped he would like her children. She hoped he would be charmed by them. She tried to prepare him—and herself—for their presence by talking about them more often as the day of their arrival drew near. She wanted to impress on him just how young they were, how innocent, how much at the mercy of adults they were. She tried to describe the children to him. Many of the things she remembered them saying or doing seemed strange as she repeated them, seemed too cutesy or almost unbelievable.

  “One year,” she told Andy one evening, “Hannah came home from her first day in first grade. She told me about the different projects and classes she would have at school, and she gave me some forms to fill out. One was permission to go on field trips. One was permission to take a section in sex education. Hannah said, ‘Oh, that slip is about sex. We’re going to have a bunch of lechers at the school.’

  “ ‘You what?’ ” I asked.

  “ ‘The teacher said we’re going to have some lechers.’ ”

  Nell continued her story, telling Andy how puzzled and slightly worried she had been, how she had finally called another mother before managing to figure out that the word Hannah was trying to say was lectures. But she could tell long before she got to the end of the story that Andy had immediately understood what the misunderstood word was and was listening to Nell only out of kindness. Oh dear, Nell had thought, if he thinks they’re boring when they’re cute, what will he think of them when they’re awful?

  And she didn’t know what to do about the sleeping arrangements. It had been so wonderfully easy and natural with the children gone. Almost every night for two months they had slept together—whether they made love or not, they had slept all night together, either at the cottage or his house. She supposed that now and then when Clary was sleeping in the cottage she could slip off to Andy’s for the night, but she didn’t especially want to do that. And she didn’t know how to tell Andy that she had never slept with a man all night around the children. She was afraid that by broaching this subject she would be pushing their relationship into a seriousness that Andy was not yet ready to discuss.

  One morning she talked it over with Clary. They were at the Steps Beach, lying on towels, wet from the ocean, tanning and lazing in the sun.

  “Clary,” Nell said. “Can we talk?”

  “Sure,” Clary said, turning over on her stomach and shading her eyes to look at Nell. “What’s up?”

  “It’s about Andy,” Nell said. “I don’t know what to do. I mean about him sleeping with me.”

  “It’s all right,” Clary said, grinning. “You can sleep with him. I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Listen, kid,” Nell said. “This is serious. I mean what about Hannah and Jeremy? I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I’ve decided that if I explained it to them, if I said, look, I’m in love with this man and he’s in love with me and we like to be with each other and so we will be with each other a lot, including sleeping with each other at night, I think if I explain it like that, it will be okay with them.”

  Clary thought a while. Then, “Yeah,” she said. “I think you’re right. I think honesty’s the best policy with kids. Besides, you’re just telling them what they should know anyway, in case they wake up in the night or something, so they won’t be shocked to find a man in your bed. All you have to tell them is that he is sleeping with you. They might think you’re doodling once or twice, but they probably assume you mostly don’t. Kids never can believe their parents doodle.”

  Nell laughed. “Doodle,” she said. She was quiet. Then she said, “But, Clary, I want the children to know that I don’t sleep with a man unless I love him.”

  “Sounds okay to me.”

  “But how can I tell the children I love him when I haven’t told Andy I love him?”

  “Do you love him?” Clary asked.

  Nell’s heart clenched. “Yes,” she said. “I guess I do. I know when I first met him, I was in love with him, infatuated. But it is lasting and it’s getting stronger. Deeper. Better. All that stuff. Clary, I really do think I love him.”

  “Well, that’s really nice, Nell,” Clary said.

  “Yes, well, but he doesn’t know,” Nell said.

  “Why not?”

  Nell turned over onto her stomach and put her head on her arms. She looked sideways at Clary and grinned. “I haven’t told him because I’m scared,” she said. “Besides, he hasn’t told me he loves me. He should be the one to say it first.”

  “Whoopee, Nell, women’s lib has sure done a lot for you,” Clary said.

  “Well, Clary, it’s not so easy,” Nell pleaded. “It’s scary.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  Nell felt her face go serious. She looked up at Clary steadily. “You know what I’m afraid of,” she said. “I’m afraid that he doesn’t love me. I’m afraid that I’ll tell him I love him and he’ll smile and oh, tousle my hair or something and tell me I’m sweet. And I’ll just die.”

  “Well, better now than later,” Clary said.

  “You’re a heartless woman,” Nell said.

  “Yeah, well,” Clary mumbled, and buried her head in her arms. “I’m working on it.”

  Nell put her head down, too, for a while. Poor Clary, she thought. Clary had broken off with Sam and was seeing another guy now, a handsome young man named Harry. Clary liked Harry, but she was still in love with Bob, and since she had told him to bug off after his second visit, she had
n’t heard from him again. It had been almost a month. She was sure that this time it was really over. Clary was dating Harry and other men, she was even sleeping with Harry. But she was certain that she’d never love anyone else in the world as she loved Bob, and she saw her whole life stretching out before her, endlessly worthless. Without Bob in her life, nothing mattered very much.

  “Love is just shit, isn’t it,” Nell muttered after a while.

  “It certainly is,” Clary agreed.

  But that night Nell got her courage up and decided to try to talk seriously with Andy. She spent the entire day in the boutique carrying on imaginary conversations in her mind. She tried to think of the perfect way to phrase all that she wanted to say. She wanted to let Andy know she loved him without seeming to supplicate. But she also wanted him to know that she considered it a serious business, this having him in her bed when her children were around. What she wanted to say to him was that if he considered their relationship a serious one, one that might have some future, then she would gladly be his lover in front of her children. But if he thought of their relationship as temporary … She remembered a term Ilona had used once recently, referring to what she intended to do once she was divorced: “sport-fuck.” Nell got nearly sick at this thought and could not come up with anything but a fanciful and unrealistic scene in which she haughtily drew herself up and said, “Well, if that’s the case, then I never want to see you again,” and tearlessly left him standing alone. She knew she would not be tearless in real life if she said she would never see him again.

  At his house that night they had a wonderful dinner of bouillabaisse with a chicory salad and hot bread. He had cooked it all himself. They sat over white wine and green grapes and chocolate cookies at the kitchen table, watching the boats sail out on the horizon in the silver evening light. They were content in each other’s company. Andy was a kind man, Nell thought: What was she afraid of?

  At last she blurted out, “Andy, we need to talk.”

  Andy looked at her, smiling, his smile slightly amused. “Sure,” he said. “Let’s talk.”

  “I mean seriously,” Nell said. “I mean—I mean, it’s going to be different with the children here. It’s not going to be as easy. They’ll be in camp all day while I work, but I’ll have to be with them at night, and they’ll be around all the time and since I won’t be with them in the day, I’ll have to spend some time with them at night, which means I won’t have as much free time to be with you as I have had and besides, I want you to sleep with me, I mean all night at the cottage, while they’re there, but I want them to know this is special, at least to me. I’ve never had a man sleep with me before in front of the children, oh God, I don’t mean that like it sounds, I don’t mean have sex in front of the children, I mean I’ve never had a man sleep in my bed with me all night, because of the children, because I want them to know—and I would like you to know, although I guess you already do know—” Nell stopped. Help me out, Andy, she prayed.

  Andy waited, looking at her.

  “Christ, Andy,” Nell said. “Don’t you know what I’m trying to say?” She was having trouble breathing. Andy was looking at her with concern and affection but not with any particular gleam of understanding. “Oh shit, Andy, sometimes I think you’re really dense!” Nell said. “I love you,” she finished, and looked away.

  She sat there then, staring out at the ocean and feeling tears come traitorously out to her eyelashes. She made her eyes wider and wider, trying to keep the drops from falling down her cheek so he would not see them. She felt him looking at her. Stupid ass, she thought, why doesn’t he say something?

  “Well,” Andy said after a while, “I guess I love you, too, Nell.”

  “You guess?” Nell asked, glaring at him.

  “I know,” he said. He reached across and held her face in his hand so that she had to look him in the eye. “Nell,” he said. “I love you. I do. And I’ll tell your children that, too. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Nell said. “Wow.” Tears ran down her face.

  They went upstairs to bed shortly after that, and Nell just gave herself over to the great warm joy of making love with a man whom she loved who had said he loved her. Later, as she lay in his arms, she thought what a pleasure it was going to be to tell Clary that Andy loved her. What a pleasure it would be to tell Ilona. To tell Katy and John Anderson. She knew that in the telling, in the repetition, it would seem more and more true, more and more real. She loved a man who loved her.

  The last Monday morning before Hannah and Jeremy arrived, Nell put on her blue leotard and went downstairs to the living room of the cottage to do her exercises. She went mindlessly, cheerfully through the routine, moving to the rhythms of a Bob Seger album. When she was almost finished, she looked up to see Clary standing in the doorway. Clary had on a black leotard that made her look as dark as chocolates and her body as thin as Nell’s wrist. Her blond hair was in a long sweeping ponytail.

  * * *

  “Hi,” Clary said. “Listen, I want you to try exercising to this record. It’s got a super beat.”

  She crossed the room and put a record by Men Without Hats on the turntable. Immediately, the room was filled with the deep thrumming of a bass guitar and an exuberant counterpoint of clapping. Then came the futuristic notes of a synthesizer and a man singing in a cheeky, dispassionate voice. Nell envisioned robots, dancers in aluminum clothes. But the music was moving. Clary started doing leg kicks and waist bends in time to the song. “Come on,” she said, smiling up at Nell over her shoulder. “It’s ‘The Safety Dance.’ ”

  Nell watched Clary a minute more, and then began to dance herself. She was overcome with emotion and turned her back as she moved so that Clary couldn’t see her face. She was thinking: I love you, Clary, not because you are my child, or even because you are such a miraculously pretty sight, but because you are so generous that even in the midst of your unhappiness you wish me happiness, you will me love.

  Nell did waist bends and leg kicks. The music was hypnotic and exhilarating; she wanted it to go on and on and she felt she could go on and on, too. Just now, dancing seemed as natural as breathing. It didn’t bother her that her waist and hips were wider than Clary’s, that she didn’t move around the room with the same skinny grace as Clary, that her body wasn’t as supple as Clary’s. Her body was fine, and she turned and started matching her step to Clary’s. She and Clary started kicking and clapping in time to the record. They bounced and puffed. They grinned at each other.

  “We can dance if we want to,” Clary said. “It’s safe to dance.”

  Tuesday, Nell took the nine-thirty plane to Hyannis and the bus to Logan Airport. She was surprised at how shocking the mainland seemed to her after two months on Nantucket. There was so much clatter in the world, so much noise! So many cars! So many people! So many houses! She felt as disoriented as a stranger from another planet. The bus from Hyannis to Boston was crammed with people, and not with the beautiful tourist types who strolled the Nantucket streets and beaches, but with weary, resigned souls who talked to one another about the heat or their bunions or their husband’s cancer operation. Nell was sobered. She realized she had been living in an unreal world.

  * * *

  It was a shock seeing the children again after two months, too. They were a little taller, a little older-looking than she had remembered; she had expected that. But Hannah’s front tooth had come in while she was away, and to Nell’s dismay, that tooth had come in crooked. It was headed sideways and back, a nice huge front tooth aiming at Hannah’s throat. Jeremy’s front teeth, on the other hand, were slightly bucked, and one of the lower teeth seemed on its way to the moon. Christ, Nell thought, they’ll both need braces.

  The children were euphoric to see Nell again, and for the first few minutes they all indulged in a rapture of hugging and kissing and touching and shouting their news at one another. Nell hurried them along through getting their luggage and out the door to a taxi so they would make the six o’
clock bus back to Hyannis. How beautiful these children are, how beautiful, Nell thought. But in the taxi Jeremy got mad at Hannah because she kept interrupting him, and Hannah wailed, “But, Jeremy, I want to tell Mom stuff, too; you’re hogging the whole conversation!” And Nell leaned back against the seat and thought to herself that she had forgotten just how demanding even lovable children were. She was surprised to find herself amazingly short-tempered. She wanted to snap: if you can’t speak politely, don’t speak at all! But she knew they were keyed-up from the trip, and more, that they were probably overloaded with emotion and apprehension. They had just come from two months in a strange place with their father and their eccentric stepmother. Now they were on their way to another strange place with their mom. They were away from their normal routines, from their school, all their friends, even the refuge of their own home and bedrooms and stuffed animals and pets. They needed her patience. They deserved it.

  During the two-hour bus ride, she divided them up. For one hour (she timed it exactly to prevent quibbling), she sat next to Jeremy and listened to him talk. For the next hour she sat next to Hannah and listened to her. They had so much to say! And so much of it was boring! Jeremy described in great detail all the roller coaster rides he had gone on at the Great America theme park north of Chicago and all the food he had eaten, and then he recounted, scene by scene, Return of the Jedi, which he had seen three times. Nell wished he would stop talking so that she could put her head back and take a nap. She was sleepy from rising early to get ready for the children, and the day of traveling on plane, bus, taxi, and now bus again was exhausting and boring. The bus fumes made her sick to her stomach. Oh, can’t you just look at the scenery, Jeremy, she thought, longing to close her eyes. I’m a monster, she thought. I should be thrilled to hear every word he says. Here my children are, safe and whole and with me. Marlow didn’t kill them in a car accident. Charlotte didn’t poison them with her cooking or lose them in some Chicago crowd. The plane didn’t crash. She tried to show more interest in Jeremy’s stories.