Nell

by Nancy Thayer

  Nell could only laugh. “Oh, Charlotte,” she said. “What can I say? You know as well as I do that Marlow isn’t interested in fatherhood.”

  “Yes, but he’s interested in me, or he used to be, and he knows it would make me happy to have kids, so he ought to let me have kids so I’ll be happy.”

  “Well, they’d be his kids, too,” Nell said, sobering up. “And he already has some of those to ignore. Two separate generations of them.”

  “Yeah, it’s too bad Clary has to come grubbing around right now. Part of this is her fault,” Charlotte said.

  “Part of what is Clary’s fault?” Nell asked.

  “Well, if she weren’t hanging around Boston now, bugging Marlow to help her find a job, making him feel he’s still responsible for her, he might be more interested in having more children. Don’t you see what I mean? Clary’s twenty-six, after all; she ought to be on her own instead of whining around after her daddy, expecting him to spend his time fixing the world up for her.”

  “Charlotte,” Nell said firmly, “I don’t think Clary ever ‘whines around’ after anyone.”

  “Well, you know what I mean,” Charlotte said, and inhaled deeply and defensively on her cigarette.

  What you mean, Nell thought, is that you don’t want Clary to exist. There had been times in her own life when she hadn’t wanted Clary to exist. She understood Charlotte perfectly. Charlotte was only three years older than Clary: living proof that Marlow was an old father, had done his share of furthering mankind, deserved a rest from raising kids. Marlow had been a father for twenty-seven years, and although he still looked young and was capable of producing more children forever, he really did deserve a break, especially since he didn’t like children all that much in the first place.

  “Listen,” Nell said. “Don’t dislike Clary because she’s Marlow’s daughter. She is a very good person. Even if Marlow didn’t have Clary—even if he didn’t have Hannah and Jeremy—he still wouldn’t want to start a family now, not at his age. Charlotte, Marlow’s fifty.”

  “I know that!” Charlotte said. “Don’t you think I know that? I’m his wife, you know!” She glared angrily at Nell, then her tears started up all over again. “Oh, Nell, how did you manage it?” she asked. “How did you manage to get such a neat life? Two beautiful children and your freedom, too?”

  “Well,” Nell said dryly, “I guess I have you to thank for at least some of that—the ‘freedom’ part.” Charlotte doesn’t have the first idea about my life, she thought, listening in gentle amazement as Charlotte carried on about her. Charlotte is determined to envy me, she thought. She always did envy me, but God knows why. “Look,” Nell said. “You shouldn’t want my life. Charlotte, you don’t understand. I’m all alone in life. I’ve got to work hard to raise the children, but they’ll leave me in a few years for their own lives. I want them to do that. But I am really alone.”

  “Oh, everybody is alone,” Charlotte intoned with dramatic gloom.

  “Charlotte, damnit, this is not some existential play we’re talking about!” Nell snapped. “This isn’t some theater of the absurd. This is real life. When I say I’m alone, I mean when I’m sick in the night I get up and fix my own 7UP and when I’m lonely in the night I’ve got only the cat to hug. I am financially and emotionally and physically my sole support. Tonight I will have no one to discuss the evening news with and no one to rub my back and no one to kiss, and if I have a nightmare, I will have no one to turn to in the dark. That’s what I mean by alone.”

  “You have lovers,” Charlotte said.

  “Sometimes,” Nell replied. “Sometimes I do. For the most part I don’t. I certainly don’t have any kind of security. Charlotte, no one has chosen me, chosen me above all others. Jesus, don’t you see that? Marlow has chosen you.”

  The two women looked at each other, deadlocked in their battle to be the most deserving of pity.

  “Well,” Charlotte said at last, stubbing out her cigarette in the ashtray, “Marlow might have chosen me, but only part of me. He doesn’t want all of me, and he certainly doesn’t want me pregnant. I figure if I get divorced right away, I’m thirty, I still have plenty of time to find a new husband and start a family. Right?”

  “Oh, Charlotte, thirty is young,” Nell said. “Of course you’ll have time to marry again and have lots of children. I’m sorry you and Marlow can’t work things out. I hope you get what you want.” She caught Charlotte’s glance. “Charlotte, I mean that,” she said.

  Nell walked back to work by herself, thinking about Charlotte and her announcement, about divorce and babies and the complications of modern life. Clary had known Marlow when he was married to her mother and Nell and Charlotte, and there would undoubtedly be more to come. Hannah and Jeremy had seen their mother with Marlow, then in a way, with Steve and Ben and Stellios and now Andy—and undoubtedly, Nell sighed, there would be more to come, because she had no real hopes that she and Andy would ever marry. Parents used to have lots of children, Nell thought; now children have lots of parents. How will we help our children believe in the reality and values of enduring love? she wondered. Oh dear, she wondered, how will we help ourselves believe? How will we help ourselves?

  The third weekend in September, Clary and Nell took the bus and ferry together to spend the weekend on Nantucket. Clary stayed with Harry; Nell stayed with Andy. For Nell, it was like going to heaven. She arrived at midnight, and Andy met them, dropped Clary off at Harry’s house, then took Nell home to his house and bed. Saturday morning Nell woke early with him, took a long, invigorating walk on the empty beach, then showered while Andy fixed them an enormous breakfast of cheese omelets, sausage and bacon, wheat toast with wild beach plum jelly. They ate and ate and drank pots of black coffee—then went back to bed. They stayed in bed, making love and dozing and talking, until evening, when they decided they were hungry again. They walked to the Brotherhood and ate, walked home to watch an old mystery movie on television, and went back to bed at midnight. It was a perfect, lazy, luxurious day; it was, as Nell told Andy, “pig heaven.”

  * * *

  Sunday morning they walked again and ate another marvelous breakfast of pancakes and maple syrup, then spent the afternoon reading The New York Times and The Boston Globe. In the afternoon they made love. Then, so incredibly soon, it was time for Nell to leave.

  Nell met Clary at the wharf, and they boarded the ferry together. They bought beer and sandwiches and sat at a red table, idly talking and looking out at the sea. Clary had had a good weekend, too.

  In fact Clary had had a good month: She was staying with Marlow and Charlotte while looking for an apartment, and last week she’d met two women who shared an apartment in Cambridge and were looking for a third woman to join them. The apartment was spacious, each woman had her own room, the location and rent were good, and the women seemed tolerable, even people Clary would like knowing. She was up about that; she was up about the possibilities of getting a good job. Through Marlow, she’d interviewed for several staff positions at colleges, and she already had an offer for an industrial position. She had partied all weekend on Nantucket. She had had fun seeing Harry but was not heartbroken to leave him. And at a party on Saturday night, she’d met a fabulous man who was planning to come to Boston soon and would give her a call. She was wired; she was skied; she babbled on and on to Nell, full of plans and gossip.

  Nell watched Clary as she rattled on, only half listening to her. She was glad Clary was happy, truly, but she was also puzzled and envious. Was it really so easy, Nell wondered. Had Clary actually put Bob out of her mind and moved on, moved away from that source of love and pain? She envied Clary her lightheartedness.

  The beer Nell drank gave her a headache. She rose, told Clary she needed to walk on the deck to see if the fresh air would help. I am getting old, Nell thought. I am getting old and cranky. It hurts to come and go from Andy in such a brief period of time. It jars me. Change is hard on me. I’m like some old horse.

  She
walked on the deck, passing other tourists, who stood in their sweaters and jackets watching as the ferry surged through the waves. Goddamnit, Nell thought crabbily, why do people smile and laugh on ferries? It suddenly seemed to her such a heartbreakingly foolish enterprise, all this passing back and forth over the water from one piece of land to another. Why do we do it? Why do we travel? Nell wondered. She plopped down on a plastic chair near the rails and stared at the darkening waves. Why do people go to Nantucket? she wondered. What do they find there? Quaint streets, seagulls, beaches—but all that can be found on the mainland. No, there’s something special about going to an island, and part of it is the voyage itself. Time must pass. Boats and people must pass over water, an unconcerned element. Andy seemed far away to Nell now, because water was coming between them, and water was different from land, water was a fluid, heartless element that would not be held or stayed. That would not be trusted in any way. Like life. Like luck. Like love?

  All this beauty, Nell thought; you have to be strong, you have to be intact, to survive all this beauty and the gift of it and the loss. So much flash was involved: sunlight on water, people’s laughter in the air. That flash, like scarlet leaves in autumn or skyrockets on the Fourth of July, provoked a fierce longing, a need for that beauty to stay.

  Clary joined Nell on deck. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “I’m okay,” Nell said. “Just tired.”

  “God, I know what you mean,” Clary said. “I’m going to have to wash my hair when I get home. I’ve got another job interview tomorrow, and—”

  Nell let Clary talk on, but she didn’t really listen. What Clary means when she says she’s tired and what I mean are two different things, she thought. Clary could go to Nantucket, Nell decided, because she was still young, still optimistic, in spite of her cynicism. Clary could still find the energy to make the trip and bear the transitions. Clary was still intact enough to handle all the greetings and partings. But Nell thought she almost could not stand it anymore—the emotion of coming and going, of saying goodbye. Because Nantucket was an island and was approached or left by water, the arrivals and departures were always so much more dramatic, as if archetypal scenes stretching back to ancient times were being repeated whenever land came into view or faded.

  Nell looked away from the water. She put her arms on the back of the chair in front of her and rested her head on her arms. She did not know how much longer she could continue to make this voyage. She had already had so many people enter and leave her life that the actual physical event, especially in such overwhelming beauty, stunned her, hurt her. Clary was still young enough to feel only the adventure. But Nell could not resist feeling the resounding metaphor.

  “Bad headache, huh,” Clary asked.

  “Yes,” Nell said. It was true. Her head did hurt. So did her stomach. But she was past tears. Where am I in life? she wondered. Will I always be traveling to find love?

  “Want some aspirin?” Clary asked.

  “Do you have any?”

  “Yeah,” Clary replied. She went off and returned with a cup of water and two aspirin.

  “Thanks,” Nell said. She took the aspirin, drank the water. “I’m sorry I’m such a bore tonight, Clary,” she said. “I’m just so tired.” She put her head on her arms again.

  Clary put her hand on Nell’s back for a while. When the ferry got to Hyannis, Nell went below, to avoid watching the boat approach the land.

  Ilona did not have to have an abortion. A week before her appointment at the clinic, she had a miscarriage. It was a scary, bloody, messy event that landed her in the hospital for a few days, and in the midst of it all she called Phillip and asked him to come see her. He came, and before the day was over, they had made up, canceled their divorce, and made plans for a long second honeymoon in the Bahamas as soon as she was well enough to travel. As soon as the hospital would release her, Phillip brought her home and put her in bed with a nurse-housekeeper to look after her. Thursday night Phillip had his regular squash game and steam night, so Ilona called Nell and asked her to come over.

  * * *

  “I’m bored,” Ilona said. So Nell came, bringing Hannah and Jeremy. They were installed downstairs in the den with a TV and with whatever delicacies the housekeeper could tempt them, and Nell was upstairs with Ilona, in her bedroom.

  In fact, on her bed. Ilona’s bedroom was not very much smaller than Nell’s entire house. It had a fireplace at one end and French doors at the other, opening onto a private balcony. It had a cream brocade chaise longue with a deep brown bearskin rug thrown over it and bearskin rugs on the floor.

  “I love walking on fur, don’t you?” Ilona asked Nell.

  “I suppose,” Nell replied. “I’ve never walked on fur before.” She was in Ilona’s bedroom for the first time and was rather daunted by its size and opulence. “That is, unless you count cat and dog fur,” she added.

  “Oh, Nell, you’re so funny,” Ilona said. “You always cheer me up.”

  Nell had started off by sitting in one of the wing chairs by the window. But the housekeeper had brought them dinner on trays, and the distance between the chair and the bed was so great and made Nell feel so ridiculously formal that finally she carried her tray over to Ilona’s bed. Ilona sat resting against pillows and the headboard with her tray on her lap, and Nell sat on the other side of the bed at the opposite end, a pillow cushioning her against the footboard, her tray on her lap. The housekeeper had fixed them lasagna and brought them huge helpings of it with garlic bread and Chianti.

  “Well, you certainly have managed to land on your feet,” Nell said to Ilona when they finished eating.

  “Yeah, I suppose,” Ilona said. “I guess. Although I’m certainly not sure I’m doing the right thing. I wish I were courageous like you, Nell. Then I’d have more fun.”

  Nell was scraping the rim of her plate with her fork, trying to get every tiny bit of the lasagna. “Courageous,” she said. “More fun. What do you mean?”

  Ilona played with her bread. (There’s one difference between us, Nell thought, watching her: I eat my bread and wish for more, and she just sits there tearing her bread into unappetizing little pieces and stays skinny.) “Oh well,” Ilona said. “If I had the courage to live alone, then I’d have more fun. That’s what I mean. I mean, it’s so wonderful falling in love, isn’t it? That part is really the highlight of life, don’t you think? The falling in love? You know—when you first meet a man and then you begin to wonder if he likes you and then you get all shivery and sick at your stomach when he asks you out. You know, I’ve had more thrills from having a strange new man just touch my elbow than from hours in bed with Phillip. Oh, Nell, I don’t want to give that up.”

  “Well then, don’t,” Nell said.

  “Could you take my tray?” Ilona asked. “Thanks,” she said as Nell rose to put her tray and Ilona’s on the table between the two wing chairs. Ilona stretched. “I’ll tell you a secret,” she said. “I’ve almost stopped bleeding. I feel fine. Actually, I feel great. But I’m going to stay in this bed and milk this situation for all it’s worth. At least this way I get Phillip to pay some attention to me. Oh look,” she said, interrupting herself, reaching to her neck to part her negligee. She brought out a necklace that had been lying against her chest, a gold chain with an enormous gold and diamond heart. “Corny, isn’t it?” she grinned. “He gave it to me when I got home from the hospital—a coming-home gift, he said.” She let it fall back against her skin. “It’s the only way he can express his love,” she sighed.

  “Jesus Christ!” Nell exploded. “Ilona, sometimes you really do make me angry!”

  “I do?” Ilona said, surprised.

  “Yes, you do.” Nell had gotten up to put the trays on the table and now she shoved her hands into her sweater pockets and walked around Ilona’s bed as she talked. “You sit there in diamonds and gold, with a housekeeper bringing you your food, and snivel about not having fun! I think having diamonds and gold and a housekeep
er might be a lot of fun, but I’ve never had the chance to find out. You whine that Phillip doesn’t show you enough affection—my God, Ilona! Here he’s treating you like a queen, like a precious damsel in distress, after you went out and got knocked up by another man! You think it’s more thrilling to be single and keep falling in love—well, why don’t you do it? And listen—don’t start that ‘courageous’ bit again. I’m not single because I’m courageous. I’m single because I have no fucking choice! Here you are, with all your security and luxury, expecting me to give you sympathy! Well, I won’t. I just fucking won’t!” Nell stopped talking, but her anger was still with her. She stood poised by Ilona’s bed, her eyes wide, her mouth pressed in a line, her fists clenched. She was shaking.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Ilona said, her voice low. To Nell’s amazement, Ilona began to yell. “No you don’t get away with that! Don’t you try that pitiful single mother routine on me, Nell!” Ilona pushed back her covers and rose to her knees to face Nell.

  “I am a pitiful single mother!” Nell said. She nearly sobbed it.

  “You could have married Ben Hedges!” Ilona said. “Don’t forget, I know all about that. You could have married Ben and have had plenty of diamonds and gold. Why, you could probably marry old Ben right now; he’s still single, I hear. But you won’t will you? You wouldn’t dream of it, would you? Nell, what do you think you want?”

  “I know exactly what I want,” Nell said. “I want to be married to a man I love. I want to go to sleep next to him and wake up next to him. I want to bring him chicken soup when he’s sick and listen to him complain about his troubles and care for him and have him care for me. I want to be married to a man I love. I truly, truly do, Ilona!” Now Nell was crying.