“And you have to admit I’ve been a lot more patient with Thomas since I started having coffee with Dale. True?”
Of course it was true, whether Helen recognized it or not. Over the past couple of weeks, she hadn’t felt as overwhelmed by Thomas and the yard and by dragging Gerald to school and shrink and piano lessons and the whole confusing assortment of real and fabricated appointments.
“I should have been discussing this dinner party. Talk about needing to have your head examined.” Although she’d planned the whole thing to meet Desmond Sullivan and get him on her side with this documentary project, she’d ended up inviting Rosemary Boyle as well. Rosemary was in the last seconds of her fifteen minutes of fame, and Jane figured Desmond might be impressed that they were friends. Plus she hadn’t had time to pull together her proposal as fully as she’d hoped, and Rosemary would be a distraction from specifics. The real insanity had been in inviting her brother and his wife. But if Desmond turned out to be a dud conversation-wise, Rosemary would be entertained just to be in the presence of Brian, with whom, Jane was almost positive, Rosemary had had a furtive encounter of some sort on the beach years ago when Rosemary and Charlie visited on Nantucket and Brian was single and still a student at the Harvard School of Design. And then there was the fact that Brian was supplying some kind of architectural expertise to this restaurant Dale had invested in, so you couldn’t tell what interesting observations he might inadvertently make about her ex-husband.
When she pulled into the driveway, she saw the caterers’ rattletrap blue van parked near the back door. Maybe she’d call the school next week and suggest they at least repaint the van since everyone she knew seemed to be increasingly concerned with “food safety”—the latest variety of eating disorder to seize the public imagination—and this thing didn’t inspire confidence. She let Helen out of the back seat and called for Gerald. A ghostly, blurred version of Sarah appeared behind the screen door. From this angle, distorted by the loose, dusty screens, Sarah bore an unsettling resemblance to Thomas, or Thomas as he might have looked if you stuck him in a flowered housedress and an unconvincing white wig. As soon as Sarah spotted Jane, she withdrew from the door into the darker recesses of the house.
Helen wandered off to the backyard; that patch of earth was finally getting some use. It was a good thing Helen felt so at home in the unruly grass because it meant she wouldn’t have to listen to Gerald complain about having an animal in the house. Gerald had been outraged by Helen’s sudden appearance. He claimed, with good reason, that getting a pet should be a family decision and since he was part of the family (“the most important part, as I see it”) he should have been consulted. “Your father was doing a favor for a colleague,” Jane had told him. “The dog had nowhere else to go. You’ve heard of charitable acts, haven’t you.” “Yes,” Gerald had replied, and then added, uncannily Scrooge-like: “I’ve also heard of animal shelters.”
As Jane stood in the hallway examining the day’s mail, Sarah appeared from the living room and gave a theatrical gasp of surprise. “I didn’t see you drive up,” she rasped. “You were so late, I started worrying about you.”
Started drinking was, obviously, the more accurate way of putting it, given the gravel in her voice and the careful way she was forming her words. Whenever Sarah was looking after Gerald, wine bottles vanished from the shelves of the pantry. Jane would love to know what she did with the empties, probably walked the streets after midnight, dropping them into neighbors’ trash cans. “I had a dental appointment,” Jane said. “It’s right there on the list I left for you.”
Sarah grunted. “There’s so much on those lists I can barely keep track. I thought it was last week you were at the dentist, no?”
“No,” Jane said, making a mental note to drop the dentist excuse in the future. Sarah probably assumed Jane was having an affair, which she’d no doubt be quicker to forgive than something as positive and life-affirming as a shrink appointment. “I had a mammogram last week.”
Sarah reached up and adjusted her wig. She had a full head of beautiful white hair, but insisted on wearing a series of synthetic wigs that looked less like hair than your average winter hat and gave her the appearance of a haughty, slightly demented clown. The reason? “They’re real time-savers.” This from a woman who appeared to spend most of her precious free time peeking through her curtains with a telephone in one hand, reporting to someone on her daughter-in-law’s comings and goings. “So many doctors up here,” Sarah said. “I suppose I should have Tommy take me for a checkup before I go down to Beth’s.”
“You’re not feeling well?” Jane asked, refusing to look up from the mail.
Sarah snorted with indignation. “Believe me, if I weren’t feeling well, the doctor is the last place I’d go.”
No point in following up on that one. Sarah was one of the sturdiest people Jane had ever met, but she was constantly complaining about her health to prove the strength of her character. She was a farm girl from Upstate New York who’d gone to Albany to work as a secretary and ended up marrying the lawyer she worked for. Thomas’s father had died when he was in his late fifties, leaving Sarah with a considerable sum of money and an all-consuming martyr complex. No one knew exactly how much she’d inherited or what she’d done with it, but she frequently found ways of slipping the words “will” and “trusts” into her self-pitying conversations. Thomas was devoted to her, and not for the money. He and Beth had inherited their own substantial sums when their father died. She shuddered to think what kind of terrorist organizations Beth had given her money to. As for Thomas, he’d shown uncharacteristic practicality by investing it in a variety of blue chip stocks and, shortly after they were married—against her wishes—a computer company called Microsoft.
“Where’s Gerald?” she asked.
“In the kitchen with the caterers. He took charge of everything the minute they showed up since you weren’t home and no one had left instructions for me on how to contact you in case of an emergency.”
“Gerald’s wonderful with organizing caterers and dinner parties.”
“Oh, my, yes.” Sarah had her head bowed and was fumbling with a chain holding her beaded cardigan on her shoulders. “It’s unusual for a boy to be so interested in cooking.”
More assaults on the masculinity of a six-year-old. Jane went back to shuffling through the same four pieces of mail she’d been playing with for the past five minutes, faster now than before. “Don’t engage” had been Berman’s advice. When it came to Sarah, Jane didn’t hold a thing back from Berman; if anything, she might have embellished a few details, not to alter the facts, but to emphasize them.
“And Thomas? Is he upstairs?”
“He’s out jogging.”
Jane looked up at her mother-in-law. “Jogging? I don’t think so.”
“He started two weeks ago! You didn’t know that? You didn’t know your husband’s been jogging every day?”
“I meant in this humidity,” Jane said. It didn’t seem very likely that Thomas had suddenly started exercising, but if so, it was something she should have noticed or at least been told about. Jane had another mantra for dealing with Sarah, a complement to “Don’t Engage,” which she’d thought up herself: “Toss Her A Bone.” “Thank you for looking after Gerald,” she said. “You’re a big help. You should make that doctor’s appointment soon since you’re only here another four weeks.”
“Eight.”
“Well. Even so.”
“I suppose that’s my cue to head back to the barn.” “The barn” was what Sarah called the carriage house they’d spent $80,000 rehabbing. With the way Boston rentals were going, they could be getting $3,000 a month easily. But no, because she wasn’t living under the same roof as them, Sarah insisted upon pretending she’d been exiled to a “barn” and probably told her friends she was forced to sleep on a pile of straw. As she was heading out the door, she turned to Jane and said, “Oh, for gosh sakes, I almost forgot. Everything’s been
so confusing here with fancy caterers showing up for a little dinner and you late and all. You had a call a few minutes ago from someone named Dale. He said you should call him as soon as you got in.”
Jane felt a rush in her chest, similar to the worrisome thump she sometimes felt after drinking too much coffee. There had been no need for either of them to mention it, but she assumed they had an unspoken agreement not to call each other at home.
“Your ex-husband was named Dale, wasn’t he?” Sarah had her meaty arms folded and resting on the shelf of her bosom.
Don’t Engage. “I suspect it was my ex-husband. Thomas and I are friends with Dale and his wife.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yes. Really.”
Sarah said nothing. With her arms still crossed, she made her exit, letting the door slam behind her.
The best thing about having Sarah around was that once she left a room, Jane felt a tide of peace and contentment wash over her. In the silence, she heard Gerald saying, “Leave those dishes on the table. I need the counter space myself.” Surely it wasn’t possible that his voice was changing already—he wouldn’t be seven for four more months—but he did have a strangely deep voice, which, along with his advanced verbal skills and his peculiarly adult interests, could be disorienting.
2.
After being rebuffed by Gerald—“I’m afraid I don’t have time for small talk, Jane”—she went upstairs and picked up the phone next to the bed. While she waited for the call to go through, she wrote “dry cleaner” on a pad of paper on the bedside table, a reminder it was time for a general tidying up of the whole second floor. She’d let things go in the past couple of weeks and it was beginning to show. Dale answered with an insulting “Yeah?” which she refused to take personally but still threw her into a defensive stance.
“It’s me,” she said curtly. “I’m returning your call.”
“Janey, I’m in the car. Traffic’s a complete nightmare.”
“That’s what you get for living out in the suburbs.” Technically, she supposed she lived in the suburbs, too, but at least they had subway lines in Brookline, not that she used them.
“I’m headed to Providence for a dinner with some developers, and to top it all off, I’m probably going in the wrong direction.”
Probably not. Probably not a business dinner either, but she was long past the stage of having to second-guess him. Supposedly, he’d had a long talk with this woman he was infatuated with and had told her they should stop seeing each other. Jane tended to believe him, but with Dale, she always kept a few embers of skepticism glowing. “What’s the urgency of the phone call?”
“Now don’t get upset, Janey, but Caroline’s going to call you tonight. We’re going up to her family’s estate on the lake over Columbus Day, and she wants you and Thomas to come with us.”
“Out of the question,” Jane said.
“Well, obviously. I figured I’d warn you so you could have an excuse ready.”
The phone cut out. Perhaps he’d entered a tunnel or was passing through some catastrophic electromagnetic field. While she listened to a deafening storm of static, she felt increasingly annoyed that Dale found it so “obvious” that she would turn down Caroline’s invitation, as if her friendship with Just Caroline meant nothing and these coffee meetings the two of them had been having were immensely significant. When the phone cut back in, Dale was still babbling on, oblivious of the fact she hadn’t heard a word. “. . . I mean it wouldn’t work, under the circumstances, and with—”
“What circumstances are you talking about?” Jane interrupted. “We’ve had a few discussions about your marriage, which in my book is barely enough to qualify as a friendship, let alone a ‘circumstance.’”
She heard him sigh and then say, “Janey,” in that slightly annoyed, slightly amused way of his that made her body shudder with sour memories of hurt and anger and infatuation. Without too much effort, she could still feel his arms around her and his rough cheek rubbing against her neck and the swampy smell of the river on that windy afternoon. “Whatever you think is best,” he said with weary resignation.
“It’s not a matter of what I think is best, Dale, it’s a matter of figuring out a way to refuse without hurting Caroline’s feelings.” The signal cut out again, an electronic shriek sliced into her eardrum, and then a teenage boy’s voice came on talking about beer commercials. A perfect replacement for Dale.
She hung up the phone and paced around the bedroom picking up socks and underwear and a stack of student papers Thomas had been reading before he went for his “jog.” She certainly didn’t welcome one more distraction or complication for this evening, especially if it involved a conversation with Caroline. Caroline was so proud of the mythic family estate in New Hampshire and tended to discuss it in ways that filled Jane with longing and melancholy. Jane had told Rosemary to arrive at 6:30 so they’d have a chance to talk, and if she was even remotely on time (unlikely) she’d be showing up soon.
She picked up a blouse she’d flung across the back of a chair and was about to hang it up when she remembered that this was what she’d been wearing the afternoon she and Dale had walked along the Esplanade with Helen and she’d let him wrap his arms around her and kiss her and press himself against her when the wind died and the sailboats went still. She put the blouse up to her nose and inhaled, but there was no trace of the spicy smell of Dale’s body, just a faint whiff of verbena from the French moisturizing lotion she’d bought a couple of weeks ago. She hung it in the closet and slammed the door shut with resolve. She wasn’t going to let herself travel down this road or slippery slope or whatever it was. The whole business of having these secret meetings with Dale had been a mistake. The only good thing to come out of them was the inspiration for the documentary series. In between discussing Caroline and his own plans for the tacky restaurant he’d invested in, Dale had listened to her refine her concept, although she had presented most of it as something she’d been planning for months. She’d close that deal, advancing her own career and proving to Dale she wasn’t as unmotivated as he assumed, and then leave him to settle his marriage in whatever way he chose.
Jane heard a car pull up in front and looked out the window in time to see Rosemary Boyle emerge from the back seat of a taxi. She was wearing a loose black sheath of a dress with narrow shoulder straps, and when she stood up, it fell into place with remarkable precision. Jane hadn’t much thought about what she was going to wear, certainly not this rumpled pullover she’d worn to Dr. Berman. (The last thing she wanted was to give Berman the idea she paid special attention to what she wore to see him, which meant she usually spent a good half hour trying to pick out something appropriately nondescript.) She went to the closet, rifled through the uninspiring collection of dresses, shirts, and jackets, and emerged holding the blouse she’d just hung up. It would have to do. Good color, went with everything, and, even if she hated to admit it to herself, there was something exciting about wearing an article of clothing that knew so many secrets.
When she turned around, Thomas was standing in the bedroom, T-shirt in his hand, sweat dripping off his pale body. His face was the most peculiar shade of purple-gray she’d ever seen, like a piece of chicken that had been boiled in grape juice, and for one moment, she was so touched by the sight of him, she nearly ruined her outfit by rushing over and embracing him.
“Look at you,” she said. “Where have you been?”
“Two blocks up Beacon, two blocks around, and back. Which is twice as much as I was doing last week.”
“But in this weather, Thomas?” She heard something in her voice she hated, a condescending mothering tone which, ironically, she wouldn’t dare use with Gerald. “What possessed you?”
He looked down at himself and slapped at his stomach, sending out a spray of sweat. “I’m afraid I might be getting a little out of shape.”
He said it with such hushed sincerity, she laughed, and, trying to reassure him, said, “You look the
same as always, Thomas. This is your shape.” She went to him and kissed his sweaty shoulder. “If you keep this up, I might have to join you.” He wouldn’t keep it up, she was certain of that, but for a moment, the idea of the two of them jogging together through the neighborhood made her feel calm and reassured. The doorbell rang. “It’s Rosemary,” she said. “I’d better go down before she rings again and breaks Gerald’s concentration.”
Eight
Dinner Conversation
1.
After driving through heavy traffic for ten minutes, Desmond’s back was plastered to the seat with sweat. Anticipating the heat, he’d worn a sleeveless T-shirt and hung his brand-new dress shirt (sale price $112) on a hook in the back seat. It was important to make a good first impression on Jane, his last best hope for professional redemption, and impossible to do so with a sweatdampened shirt clinging to your nipples.
Jane and Thomas lived in a shady enclave in Brookline. The streets were quiet, cool, overhung with towering maple trees and sycamores; he felt as if he’d entered a gated community even though the main shopping street was a mere two blocks away. The houses were enormous, ranging in architectural style from Tudor to Bauhaus, all filtered through a Marie Antoinette fever dream of gracious living. But that wasn’t fair either; there was some overlay of New England discretion—or was it Puritanical shame?—in the neighborhood. All the immense houses were practically blushing with modesty, peeking up over a carefully sculpted privacy hedge, or revealing just enough of themselves through a screen of pine trees to let you know the essence of what you were missing. The Miller-Cody manse was at the loop end of a cul-de-sac. By the standards of this neighborhood, their house looked almost shabby-—a generous Queen Anne Victorian with a turret, a wraparound porch, and a lot of lacy ornamentation skirting the eaves, all of it in need of a fresh coat of paint. Unlike its neighbors, it was fully exposed to the street with only a hint of unkempt lawn separating it from the sidewalk.
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