by Nancy Thayer
One night, stewing because she was bored with her dresses, she put on a long cotton skirt with an elastic waist. It was violet. She looked at herself in the mirror; the skirt was old and so long that it came to her ankles. She pulled it up just above her breasts and smiled: Now it looked like a strapless dress. When she and Andy arrived at the cocktail party, the hostess and several other women made a fuss over Nell’s dress—so simple, so sexy, where did she get it, did they sell the dress at Elizabeth’s? And Nell was able to smile smugly and say honestly that it really was just an old dress. She enjoyed herself immensely at the party, passing through the various rooms of the house to get herself a drink or greet an acquaintance. She felt unusually young that evening. All the other women there were wearing stylized frocks, clusters of jewels, heavy makeup. Nell felt in contrast fresh and charming, like a real flower in the midst of artificial ones.
But at one point in the evening she saw Andy in the corner of a room talking intimately with a woman who was so gorgeous she made Nell’s blood turn cold. She was a blonde in a red dress and diamonds. She kept touching Andy as she talked, in playful ways, in serious ways, now on his arm, now fiddling with his tie, now ever so lightly touching the side of his mouth with one finger. Nell was so stunned that she forgot to listen to the man who was speaking to her. She just stared. Jealousy surged within her. Clearly, Andy and this woman were familiar with each other. Were they old lovers? The woman’s dress was skin-tight everywhere, so that it was perfectly clear how flawless her body was. Nell felt her pleasure in her old cotton skirt disappear. She realized how much a camouflage it was, falling full from the elastic band just above her breasts. She could never have worn that tight revealing dress the blonde wore. Andy and the blonde looked so cozily attracted to each other that they might as well have been wearing neon signs that blinked OLD LOVERS—and they could have run the signs on the electricity of their obvious mutual attraction.
Nell excused herself from the man who was speaking to her and went into another room on the pretext of getting a fresh drink. She was handed an icy Chablis spritzer, and she took it with her into the downstairs bathroom. She stood there a moment, leaning against the closed door. What did you think, dumbo? she asked herself. Did you assume that because Andy never talked about them, he never had any other lovers? Of course he’s had other lovers! Nell realized that she had simply put Elizabeth’s warnings out of her mind because she could not bear to think of them. She could not bear to think of Rachel Woods, who had been a lover of Andy’s—when, how many years ago, what had Elizabeth said? Three years ago? Four? She had not asked Andy about her because she did not think she could stand to hear anything he had to say. Maybe I am just the latest in a long string of lovers, Nell thought. And maybe by love he means something completely different from what I do. Maybe when he says, “I love you,” he means only that he likes to take me to bed and cares enough for me that he doesn’t want to hurt my feelings. While when I say, “I love you,” I mean much more intense, passionate, serious things, I mean I need him and want to live my life with him and am miserable without him and …
Nell bit her lip. She could feel tears welling up, and she didn’t dare cry because she had come into the bathroom without a purse and if she cried her mascara would streak down her face and her nose would turn red. She knew she had to get herself out of the bathroom, to go back out into the crowd of people and laugh and talk and mingle. She couldn’t simply hide in a bathroom all night, indulging in a wild funk of jealousy and misery. She took a sip of her drink and ran her fingers through her hair. She looked at herself in the cabinet mirror above the sink. She knew that earlier in the evening her happiness had made her look so radiant that even her old cotton skirt had been transformed. But now she felt as though a light had gone out within her, and she thought she looked only tired and the clever skirt/dress seemed to her only plain, drab, and silly.
She forced herself out of the bathroom and back into the party. She chatted with people while Andy continued to be monopolized by the blonde. It seemed the evening would never end. Nell felt her self-confidence and all her pleasure in life leaking out of her, as if she were a balloon deflating. She was terrified that Andy would bring the blonde over to meet her; she thought she might burst into tears. At the least she knew she would not be able to carry off the meeting casually; she would not be able to smile smugly and put her hand on Andy’s arm with a relaxed and natural possessiveness. Finally, Nell went onto the sun porch and sat down next to some ancient dowager she’d never met before. The old woman had been lonely, had been at the point of nodding off in the middle of the party. She was delighted to have Nell join her, and the two of them engaged in a superficial but enjoyable conversation of the sort initiated on airplane flights, about children and pets and weather. When Andy came to fetch Nell, he was alone, and as they walked through the house and out to the car, Nell noticed the blonde was not in sight.
That night, after they had eaten and Nell had spent some time with Hannah and Jeremy and tucked them in bed, she managed to get up enough courage to ask Andy about the blonde. She tried to be casual about it. She aimed for a light, careless, sophisticated approach. She slipped onto the sofa next to Andy and stretched elaborately—she had put on the black nightgown and peignor—and yawned.
“The party was fun, wasn’t it?” she asked. After Andy nodded agreement, she grinned and said, “And you certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself. With the blonde.”
Andy smiled. “Jacqueline,” he said.
Shit, Nell thought, she would be named Jacqueline.
“I guess I did spend a lot of time with her,” Andy said, as if he only now were being struck with that fact. “I’m sorry if I left you on your own too long. But you always seem to know people at parties. And I hadn’t seen Jacqueline for a long time. We’re old friends.”
“Old lovers,” Nell said lightly, smiling, as if amused by it all.
Andy’s smile broadened. “Was it that obvious?” he asked.
“It was that obvious,” Nell replied. She leaned back against the arm of the sofa and raised her arms, ran her fingers through her hair, as if she were feeling lazy and at ease, as if she were discussing the weather. “I’ll bet you have a lot of old lovers.”
Andy looked at her, not smiling now, studying her face. Then he said, “Well yes, I suppose I do. I am an adult, after all. A grown-up, divorced man. It would be rather odd if I didn’t have lots of old lovers, don’t you think?”
“Oh of course,” Nell said, shrugging, smiling what she hoped was a clever little smile, a smile that suggested this conversation didn’t mean a thing to her. Her heart was pounding. God, she thought, I’m even capable of retroactive jealousy! Stop it, Nell, you dimwit! she yelled at herself within her mind. Listen, don’t let this get to you. You have your share of old lovers, too. You’re every bit as sophisticated as he is!
Before she could think of anything else to say, Hannah appeared in the doorway. She was wearing her pink-and-white-flowered nightgown and rubbing her eyes. “Mommy,” she said weakly, “I had a nightmare. Then I couldn’t find you in your bed.”
“Oh, darling,” Nell said, rising and going over to her daughter. “You’re all right. And I wasn’t in bed because it’s not that late yet.” She knelt down. She put her arms around Hannah.
“Oh, Mommy!” Hannah said, her eyes opening wide as Nell approached her. “What a fancy dress you’re wearing. Are you going to a party? Are you going to dance?”
“Hannah,” Nell said. “This is a nightgown.”
Hannah studied the black lace and satin garment that hung so lusciously on Nell’s body. Clearly, she was skeptical. “Well, it’s not like your other nightgowns,” she said. “It’s so pretty.”
Hannah, I am going to kill you when I get you alone, Nell thought. Or maybe I’ll just let you continue to make it clear to Andy just how unglamorous a creature I really am, and then I’ll kill myself.
“Let me get you back to bed, darling,” Nell sai
d. “You’re so sleepy. What was your nightmare about?”
She walked Hannah back up the stairs, took her to the bathroom, tucked her back in bed. All the time she was automatically soothing Hannah, but inside she was seething. When she got back downstairs and entered the living room where Andy sat, she said, almost without knowing she was going to say it, “And of course there was Rachel Woods.”
Andy was startled. “What?” he asked.
To her chagrin, Nell began to cry helplessly. “Oh, Andy,” she said. “I’m so embarrassed. But a few days ago when Elizabeth O’Leary was here she asked me if I was seeing anyone, and I told her about you. And she told me about you and Rachel Woods. And she told me to watch out, that you played around a lot and that I shouldn’t trust you. God, I am so embarrassed.” Nell had to get up to go into the kitchen to get a tissue.
“Look,” Andy said when she came back. “I don’t understand why you’re so upset. Just because I had an affair with Rachel Woods a few years ago doesn’t mean I’m not trustworthy now. I don’t even see how that follows. You know that since I’ve known you I haven’t seen any other woman. And I don’t want to. Nell, I love you.”
I don’t want to be just another affair to you, Nell thought. I want to be the love of your life.
I want to be married to you.
God, Nell thought, how many things there are that I am afraid to say to him.
“Andy,” she said, “this is so hard for me to say, but—I’m afraid we might mean different things when we say we love each other. I’m afraid I mean, when I say I love you, all sorts of things. I mean that I care for you and I want to make you happy and I feel jealous and—and I want a future with you. And you might just mean that you like to go to bed with me.”
“Oh, Nell,” Andy said. He stood up and walked over to where she stood in the doorway wiping her face with a tissue. He took her in his arms. He kissed her wet face and then, with a gesture much like a father’s, he put his hand on her head and pressed it against his chest and stroked her hair. “Nell, my darling,” he said. “Oh, sweetheart, don’t be so sad. There’s no reason for you to be so sad. I don’t understand. You mustn’t think things like that. Listen,” he said, and he held her away from him so he could see her face. “I love you. I care for you. I want to make you happy. I feel jealous, too. And”—he grinned—“I also like to go to bed with you.”
Nell smiled back through her tears. Andy pulled her to him and kissed her. They kissed for a long time, until Andy said, “And you look so pretty in this fancy dress, I think I’ll take you to a party.” Then he picked her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs to the bedroom.
Nell was so pleased by his affection, and then so terrified when he was carrying her up the stairs that he would think she was too heavy and then so overcome with pleasure when they were in bed together, that she could think of little else. But as they lay side by side with each other late at night and she heard Andy fall into his deep and easy sleep, she lay awake, irked by an unpleasant and niggling fact. Andy had not said, “And I want a future with you.” Don’t borrow trouble, Nell, she told herself. But he had remembered and repeated all her other words so exactly. She was afraid that she was being only realistic to worry about what it was he had so carefully omitted saying.
She had trouble sleeping that night. She drifted in and out of dreams involving Andy and parties and Hannah and clothes. During one dream she saw herself enter a cocktail party in her black satin nightgown. The blonde in the red dress and diamonds turned and looked at her with a smirk, and Andy, standing next to the blonde, said, “Who in the world is that silly woman?” His voice was so clear that Nell awakened, startled, and looked at him, thinking he had actually spoken. But he was sleeping soundly.
* * *
She lay awake then, staring at the night sky outside the window. She could sense the gentle rise and fall of Andy’s chest as he lay next to her in his deep, contented sleep. He was lying on his side, his long body angled across the bed. He was so tall that he could not lie on this regular bed and get all of himself on it and under the covers. At his house he had a king-size bed, where he and Nell could sleep quite comfortably together. But here he had to bend himself in complicated positions, so that he became all elbows and bony rear and feet and knees, unwittingly waking Nell all night long with pokes as he moved or shifted in his dreams. At the beginning of the night, he would always go into a gentlemanly curl that would leave Nell at least a fourth of the bed. But as soon as he was really asleep, his angular body would loosen and expand, and all through the night Nell would find herself inching over closer and closer to the side of the bed. Often she slept with one arm and leg hanging down the edge of the bed to the floor.
She did not mind this. She liked it. She loved it. It was a wonderful thing to her to awaken in the night, to feel his hairy knees against her back. Sometimes she would carefully place her hand there, on his knees, or his hip, whatever part of him was nudging her. His body was so different from hers, from her children’s. There was the difference in size—he was so much longer, wider, and his bones so much heavier. And he was so hairy, where her legs or stomach were smooth; although there was a spot she loved, just at the base of his spine, that was as hairless and silky as a baby’s bottom.
It was a good thing to sleep with someone else, Nell thought. It was a good thing to sleep with a man if you were a woman. Sometimes, when she was alone at night, she had trouble going to sleep or staying asleep, because giving herself over to the enormous black space of sleep and dreams and night often required a degree of faith she could not muster. Often, alone at night, she would think that relaxing into sleep took the same kind of courage that jumping out of a spaceship into the empty, inhuman expanse of the dark universe required. She felt like a stranded astronaut, alone, floating, with no human being to pull her back to safety. With Andy next to her in bed she felt safe. His male spirit balanced out her female one. He was there with her. Even on a practical level, it mattered that if there were a fire or a burglar or some other real crisis, he was an adult human being who might smell the smoke or hear the intruder or in some way help Nell in the night. But it was more than that, more than the merely real. It was a spiritual comfort he gave her, a knowledge that even though she sank into the deepest nightmare, she was not alone, she could not fall, reaching out, calling out, to find that her voice and hands reached only cold, uncaring space. His spirit warmed hers just as his body warmed her body.
When the moon was full so that light slanted in through the window, Nell would sometimes lie awake at three or four in the morning and study the slant of Andy’s hip and back or, if he was turned toward her, his face. Body, she would think, body of Andy, you must surely sense the love I have for you, the desire I have to continue to give you pleasure, comfort, and to keep you healthy and safe. You know I need you, body, and I tell you with all my touches and caresses how well I could care for you. Don’t you have any powers? Can’t you insinuate yourself into this man’s rational, cool, careful mind and make him wild with desire for me? Body of Andy, make him love me as much as I love him.
Andy would shift and sigh. Nell would gaze at him, thinking: Ten more days, eight more days, and I will leave Nantucket, and he has said nothing about the future. Damn him. Help. Oh God, she would think when she was most upset: are you an Indian-giver? Are you a tease?
She would think she would never fall asleep, but lie awake all night, trapped in her longing, lying still in order not to awaken Andy, but feeling frenzied with need. But at some time before daylight she would fall back into sleep, and when she was awakened by the alarm, she would find that Andy had already risen and gone off for his morning walk. She would be alone in the bed which, in his absence, was wide and cold.
The last Saturday night in August, Clary threw a party. She asked Nell if it would be okay if she had a lot of people over for “a sort of end of the summer thing.” Nell said sure, as long as the cottage didn’t get destroyed. Clary also asked Nell if
she would please come, because she wanted her to get to know some of the people—some of them, Clary grinned, so she and Nell could laugh about them later.
* * *
So Nell found herself cooking hot dogs—it rained that night, and they had planned a cookout—in the kitchen oven and refilling bowls of potato chips and emptying ashtrays. They had set a bar up on the kitchen table and stocked the refrigerator with beer, and the guests helped themselves to their drinks. About twenty people were gathered in the living room, although more came and went during the course of the evening. Nell set out black plastic trash sacks, which grew bulky with emptied beer cans. In one corner of the big living room six or seven people sat on the floor passing a joint around. Nell felt a momentary rush of conservative disapproval; she realized she still carried some kind of maternal residue of feelings for Clary. There was this much difference between her generation and Clary’s: Nell didn’t worry about people drinking, but did worry about people smoking pot. Still, she told herself, Clary was twenty-six, an adult, and her guests were all in their twenties and thirties, not much younger than she. She was not their mother. She decided to say nothing. It was Clary’s party.
Hannah and Jeremy loved the action and the noise. They liked bringing plates of food to people. Now and then a good-hearted man or woman would draw the children into a conversation. Nell would look over from the kitchen to see Hannah or Jeremy holding forth, animated, face glowing, while the strange grown-ups smiled and listened. She was always occupied, too, listening to Mindy or Kelly chattering on about the boutique, their boyfriends, their winter plans, or getting to know some character whom Clary brought for her to meet.
During the course of the evening, Nell came to have some understanding of what this particular group was like. Most of the men and women were dropouts, reverse snobs who disdained the ambitious rat race, had contempt for their contemporaries who were slaving away as lawyers or medical interns or accountants. They said stockbrokers with a snarl of scorn that reminded Nell of politicians like Spiro Agnew speaking of “intellectuals”; and they were not that much different, Nell mused, in their adamant closed-minded aversion. More than half of the people she met said they were actors, artists, directors, photographers, dancers. But if Nell asked them where she could see an exhibit of their work or what they had acted in recently, they changed the subject. Little by little the truth came out—what they really did was wait tables or work as carpenters’ assistants or open scallops. They all told Nell they had moved to Nantucket to “get away from it all,” but as the evening went on and Nell watched and listened, she realized it was more than that. These people not only thought they were getting away from being bourgeois, avoiding entrapment in a life of boring money-grubbing. They also thought they were escaping mortality and aging. They thought they were in Never-Never Land; if they weren’t tainted by making money, if they weren’t enslaved by mortgages or leases, if they never made a commitment to one job or one person, they would stay forever young, carefree, and happy. Jesus, Nell thought after the seventh person told her he had come to Nantucket because he didn’t want to be a lawyer, this is sort of creepy.
