This caught her interest, like something speeding past in her peripheral vision. She knew she ought to ignore it, but she couldn’t help spinning back for a double take. “Oh?”
“I don’t know what had been going on, but whatever it was, I think it’s over. I know I asked you to tell me everything, and yet, for some reason, I don’t want to know anything.” She gripped the wheel with both hands and shrugged. “I’m just grateful to you, that’s all.”
Jane looked out the window beside her. They were passing by a sunburnt open field with a weathered white farmhouse off in the distance. There were children playing under an old maple tree that looked half dead, and she could smell cows; shit, in other words. She didn’t like the country and never had. She often felt frightened when she was surrounded by trees and undeveloped land, and the inky dark and thick silence of the nights unsettled her. Undoubtedly, it had something to do with being uncomfortable with herself, but then again, what didn’t? And yet, there were benefits to living among animals, close to insects and the soil; at the moment, she felt peaceful in the warm car, breathing in manure and dust and secondhand smoke from Caroline’s cigarettes. Maybe she really had done Caroline a good turn after all. Maybe it didn’t matter that she and Dale had passed a few flirty moments as long as he was more responsive to his wife. She’d talk to Dale this afternoon and clear it all up. “Speaking of gratitude,” Jane said, “thank you for being so kind to Gerald.”
“Gerald,” Caroline said, laughing out a lungful of smoke. “What a little charmer.”
Did she mean it? Of course she did. Caroline was fluent in four languages but didn’t know the meaning of the word irony. As for Gerald, he seemed to have fallen in love with her as soon as he laid eyes on her willowy blond loveliness. He followed her around like a smitten paramour. And Caroline was amused and smitten in turn. Would he like to go fishing, canoeing, learn to play tennis, go out sailing with her? No? Well, how about they go up to the attic together and go through her grandmother’s trunk? You never knew what fun old clothes you were going to find there.
“You find him charming?” Jane asked, realizing that she was pleading for a more detailed compliment, not caring how desperate she sounded.
“Oh yes,” she said, mildly enough to be believable. “I have a feeling he’s going to be a very talented designer or artist when he grows up. He has an eye for color and line.”
Code for homosexual. But Caroline was being genuinely complimentary, no edge in her voice, and Jane realized, as they drove through the flickering golden light, that she was a little smitten, too. The warm breeze was blowing in the window, scattering Caroline’s fine golden hair. She swept it off her face with her right hand, the sun glinting off a hammered silver bracelet she had clamped around her wrist. Jane pulled down the sun visor and looked at herself in the narrow mirror. If Caroline was a perfectly ripe peach, she was a head of broccoli. Freckles, wrinkles, and dark circles. She wasn’t living her life properly, that was her problem. Study Sufism and you end up looking like Caroline, run around in circles for ten years and you end up looking like Jane.
They turned onto the long sloping drive that led from the road through the Wade estate and down to the lake. The pines on either side of the drive had to be a hundred feet tall, and the dirt road itself was covered with a blanket of fallen needles and bright leaves. The leaves parted for the Citroën as Caroline shifted and they sped downhill. And then they rounded a curve and the Georgian brick manor house appeared in a clearing, surrounded by acres of yellowing grass. The house itself seemed to be gazing off at the limp green lake and the low rolling mountains. How Dale’s pulse must have raced when he saw this estate for the first time. No need to pretend that this view didn’t have something to do with his decision to marry Caroline six months after they met. Dale could make all the money he wanted with his real estate deals and his restaurants and his developments; he could make more powerful friends than he could keep track of; he could accumulate dozens of academic degrees and become fluent in ten different accents; but here was the ultimate prize, the one thing he couldn’t buy outright and had to marry into: class.
Perhaps breeding explained Caroline’s tolerance for all the people at the farmer’s market, for Gerald, for Jane herself. Perhaps it explained her emotional generosity, the mild but seemingly genuine interest she had in Thomas’s conversation. This world of proud lineage and family tradition, of inherited wealth and social standing, of gracious hosting and polite conversation, of solid brick houses and hundred-acre estates was so different from the disjointed incoherence of Jane’s alcoholic background, she and Caroline might as well be different species. She felt simultaneously like a visitor at the zoo and one of the caged animals on display. The only thing that made her feel slightly more at ease was knowing that Dale didn’t belong here either. They rattled up to the side of the house and Caroline turned off the engine. The car made a few shuddering protests and sank. Caroline opened her door and stepped one foot out, then seemed to think better of it and turned toward Jane. She put her hand on her knee. “You’re a good friend,” she said. And leaned over and carefully placed a lemon-scented kiss on Jane’s cheek.
Jane practically swooned. She wanted to grab Caroline’s hand. Leave Dale, she wanted to say. Let me live here instead. Let me try to be more like you.
Dale was sitting at the kitchen table, talking building codes on the wall phone with the cord stretched across the room. There was a tall glass in front of him filled with ice and—probably—liquor, and he was swirling the ice with two fingers in lazy, distracted circles. His feet, encased in black sandals with Velcro straps, were propped up on the chair beside him. His body language was completely out of sync with his barking tone of voice, so you couldn’t tell whether he was having a pleasant, relaxing afternoon in the country or a hellish business crisis. Of course, he probably didn’t know himself. Caroline went to the rounded aqua refrigerator—all the appliances in the house were masterpieces of 1940s and 1950s design—to put away a package of goat cheese.
“Where are Thomas and Gerald?” Jane asked quietly.
Dale moved the mouthpiece under his chin. “Down by the lake with the dog. Father-son outing.”
Dale had on shorts and a polo jersey; only Thomas and Gerald, both of whom had put on long pants and a sweater that morning, had dressed for the season rather than the weather. She suspected there was some hidden meaning to the comment about “father-son outing,” but she didn’t care enough about his opinion of either Thomas or Gerald to try to figure it out.
Caroline was loading the freezer with loaves of bread. “Jane had an encounter with Wilma Wyndam at the farmer’s market,” she said.
“The Nazi?” Dale asked. “Fuck this call,” he said, pushed himself out of his chair and slammed down the phone.
“I made the mistake of buying something from her.”
Dale laid a brotherly hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. “Thanks for supporting our local militia.”
Caroline grinned at him and walked out to the cold storage room with a bag of apples. Once Jane was sure she was out of earshot, she said, “I’d like to talk with you.”
“I’ll look you up when I’ve averted the current disaster.”
2.
Desmond had given her his unfinished draft of the Pauline Anderton manuscript so she could search for a hook they could use for the documentary. She was lying on a faded chintz-covered chaise longue tucked under a dormer window in the third-floor bedroom where she and Thomas had spent the night, reading the manuscript. Helen was curled up on the floor beside the chaise, and she was stroking her fur with one hand. From here, she could see Thomas sitting in a dark green Adirondack chair on the lawn and Gerald reclining under a tree reading a 1920s Harper’s Bazaar he and Caroline had found in the attic this morning. Caroline was three stories below on the loggia, curled up on a wicker chaise—another family heirloom—a cigarette in one hand, a leather-bound copy of The Decameron open on her lap. She’d
tied a bandanna around her head to keep her hair from blowing in her eyes, and from here she looked like a frail beauty reclining on the deck of an ocean liner. Other family members were showing up later in the day, but they were staying in the many guest houses scattered around the estate.
“Some people are just born with it,” she told Helen. “Not you and not me, doggie, but definitely Miss Just Caroline Wade.”
Jane had finished a chapter of the Anderton biography in which Anderton, before being discovered by Walter Winchell, had backed out of a potentially career-making spot on a national radio broadcast because her husband had a head cold and insisted she stay and care for him. With characteristic bluntness, she’d tossed off the unfortunate clash of events as if none of it mattered. There was a quote from a postcard she’d sent to her sister: “Don’t bother tuning your radio Saturday night. Deal blew up due to Michael’s cold. Who cares? I hate g.d. New York anyway. I’d rather stay in Hell City, FLA, and spill hot soup on the slob. They wanted me to do one of those Cole Porter numbers. Hate them all.”
In the book, Desmond interpreted this incident and Anderton’s reaction to it as an example of the ways in which Anderton had been a victim of the narrow roles available to a woman in the 1950s. Jane saw it differently. She viewed the whole radio disaster as a willing sacrifice Anderton had made for love. She’d given up a part of her career for the sake of a man she loved deeply, no matter how often she referred to him as a slob or a bastard in her letters. It was probably best not to point it out to Desmond and confuse him further.
A breeze blew in the window, stirring the warm, slightly musty air. The climate was now so unpredictable—hot one day, cold the next—it was like living with an unmedicated manic-depressive who, at any moment, could fly into a-frenzied rage and start ripping down the wallpaper. Two days ago there had been massive tornadoes in Texas that killed eighteen people and turned an entire small city into a heap of rubble; a hurricane “of biblical proportions” was threatening St. Kitts. No wonder people everywhere were so uneasy, so fearful. This bedroom, now so warm Jane was beginning to feel drowsy, had been cold last night. The room had twin beds, but when she complained about the chill, Thomas had crawled under the covers with her and cuddled against her back, enfolded her in his big arms and rubbed his feet against hers. They’d listened to the night sounds of the old house and the old-money estate, the creaking of trees against the roof, the shudder of antique windows, the faint smack of the lake against docks and shoreline. When she felt him rocking against her, lightly, shyly sliding his penis along the back of her thigh, she was overcome with loneliness. He started to make love to her, and she found herself drifting away from her own body until she was perched on one of the creaking tree branches, quietly watching him nuzzling and sucking and prodding. When he finished, he slipped back into his own bed and she stayed somewhere outside herself and watched as she buried her face in her pillow and silently wept.
The smell of Caroline’s cigarettes wafted in on the breeze and she gazed out the window again. There was Thomas, there was Gerald, the pieces of her life spread out on the rolling yellow leaf-covered lawn below her. How nice it all looked in this late afternoon autumn light. How nice it all looked from a distance.
“You look comfortable.”
She turned and Dale was leaning into the room, his hands gripping the door frame, dressed in khaki tennis shorts that made his olive skin look even darker. How did he maintain this disconcerting tan? Probably made furtive visits to a downtown tanning salon run by a homely high school dropout who was in love with him.
“I am comfortable,” she said. “It’s wonderful here, like taking the cure at a sanatorium. It’s so peaceful.” And yet watching him walk into the room with his slow, rolling walk, she felt a tremor of anxiety unbalance the melancholy peace she’d felt only a moment ago. The muscles in her body tightened, and she heard a faint ringing in her ears, something high-pitched and very far away. “Did you resolve whatever problem you were having down there?”
“Nearly. They’re having some major conflicts between the restaurant design and code requirements. Americans with Disabilities Act, of course. A huge pain in the ass and a killer expense.”
“It’s awful,” Jane said. “Imagine having to cut into your profits just so a few disabled people can have the same quality of life as the rest of us.”
He held up his hands. “I just said it was a pain. That’s all. Your sarcasm flares up like an allergic reaction around me, Janey.”
She shrugged. She hadn’t meant to say what she’d said, but he was right, it just happened when she was around him.
Dale looked so silly in this room with its faded wallpaper—pink roses against a soft green background. The incongruity of his burly body and the pastel femininity of the room were almost laughable. It even smelled a little like old face powder up here. Thomas was so much taller than Dale, his head nearly brushed the low ceiling of the room; and yet Dale had the larger, more commanding presence (a word she hated, but like other words she hated—cute, sermonize, marvelous—it had its uses), so much so that she could feel him filling up whatever room he entered. He went to the bureau across the room from her and lifted one of the antique silver hairbrushes.
“I wonder how many decades it’s been since someone actually used this thing.”
“It’s a museum piece,” she said. “Usefulness is beside the point.”
“Apparently. Have you noticed there are no Touch-Tone phones in the house?”
“Don’t knock it, Dale, just because neither one of us has a family history we want to preserve.”
When Jane and Brian’s parents died, Brian was about to start college. Of course there were no retirement funds set up or insurance policies. A group of concerned relatives had cleared out the house and sold everything off to help raise money. She had no silver hairbrushes or chenille bedspreads, just a jumble of vague memories that grew vaguer every year.
“I wasn’t knocking it, Janey. As you probably figured out, I like all the pomp and most of the circumstance.”
Jane watched him carefully, taking in his body as he languidly set down the hairbrush and straightened out the bureau scarf. She’d never completely trusted Dale, not for one minute of their marriage, and she didn’t trust him now. She felt cornered in the chaise longue, but she didn’t know where she’d stand or what she’d do with her hands if she got up.
“You didn’t tell me Gerald was in therapy,” Dale said.
“No,” she said, thrown off guard, “I didn’t. Who did?”
“I asked him about his gymnastics classes and he told me they were really therapy sessions.”
She should have made it clearer to Gerald that Dr. Rose Garitty was a gymnastics instructor to everyone, not just Sarah, but she hadn’t wanted to make him think there was anything wrong with going to therapy. She’d have to figure out a new way to frame it.
“He’s okay, isn’t he?”
“Of course he’s okay. He’s just a little . . .” She waved her hand at the subject, hoping to get rid of it.
“He’s just a little boy,” Dale said. He slipped his hands into the pockets of his shorts, gave them a tug so they rode up his thighs. “What is it you wanted to talk about?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.
Watching him walk toward her, she felt her whole body stiffen. She’d never had a panic attack, but maybe this was how they started. She gripped Helen’s fur more tightly, but the dog flopped over on her side, sighed and went deeper into sleep, no help at all. Dale sat down on the end of the chaise, an inquisitive, mocking expression around his lips. She pulled her feet in close to her butt so her knees were up under her chin and some of the manuscript slid off her lap and onto the floor. Dale looked at the fallen pages with his head tilted, but Jane said nothing. Her whole body was trembling now. She wrapped her arms around her shins and squeezed so he wouldn’t notice. She could smell his body, warm and oily, like a toasted pecan.
“Hmmm?” he said. “What did you w
ant to talk about?” He put his hand on her ankle and massaged up and down with his thumb.
“Don’t do that,” she said. Her voice was so hoarse and thick with desire, even she recognized it for what it was.
“Don’t do what?” he asked and slid his hand up to her knee and then down the back of her thigh.
“Caroline is right below us.”
“Yes, I know. And Thomas and Gerald are out on the lawn. And we can see all of them from this window and if they were to look up they’d see sunlight reflecting off glass.”
“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“I like Thomas,” Dale said. He rested his chin on her knee. “He told me more about the history of this area in five minutes than I learned from coming here for five years.”
“He’s like that,” Jane choked out. “He knows everything. Everything, Dale.”
“Oh?”
A terrible wave of heat was spreading over her whole body; all of her exposed skin, she worried, must be flushed and hot. She let her head fall back on the chaise and turned her face toward the window while he kissed her knees and slowly slid his hand down her leg until the tips of his fingers were somewhere inside the legs of her shorts. Everything outside looked so peaceful, e the falling leaves and Gerald turning the pages of the magazine and Thomas with a book open on the arm of the Adirondack chair. If she could just step outside her body now, she’d be able to find the strength to stop Dale, she’d be able to walk out of this room and down the stairs and outside, she’d be with them, out on the lawn in afternoon sun where she belonged. But that wasn’t likely. She couldn’t even gather enough strength to stop herself from trembling.
“Don’t,” she whispered.
One minute, it seemed, you were living your life and shopping for dinner and making plans for your career, you were full of resolve and good intentions, full of love and sacrifice and generosity, and then, without warning or transition, you were sliding off the edge of your world, unable even to reach out a hand to prevent yourself from falling into oblivion. Sweet, hot, sheltering oblivion.
True Enough Page 20
